Does bread dominate your diet?

I love a good quality bread and my mother raised me with traditional german grey bread. Since some years I mainly eat porridge for dinner, but that could change in the next years back to bread. Because my mother and I planned to build a small, wood fired oven this year, on our ground out of clay.
stay healthy
 
PabloLerntKochen said:
I love a good quality bread and my mother raised me with traditional german grey bread. Since some years I mainly eat porridge for dinner, but that could change in the next years back to bread. Because my mother and I planned to build a small, wood fired oven this year, on our ground out of clay.
stay healthy
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We have a wood fired oven in the garden. We used it a few times to make pizza in the spring last year. I think I posted a pic. I just took this out of the oven.
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I wouldn't say that bread dominates my diet, but I certainly eat bread every day. On some days, it might just consist of a slice of bread with a boiled egg at breakfast; on other days, there will be a fair bit more.

As regards bread as a side dish, I don't eat bread if I'm having something with rice (say a curry or chilli dish). I almost invariably have some garlic bread if I'm having pasta. We never waste bread - if it starts getting a bit tired, we'll toast it for something simple, be that baked beans, poached egg, cheese or just spreading some jam on it.
 
ChefBasics said:
Every day we have sourdough at my house. A large bread board and knife have their own spot on the kitchen counter.

I make 2 large loaves every weekend, freeze 1 (which comes out wednesday night) the other is left on the bread board ready for the week.

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We have it as toast, sandwiches, dipped in oil and vinegar, made into amazing croutons for salads and soups, bread and butter pudding, stuffings and anything left is made into crumbs for more desserts or coating chicken and pork.
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Your sourdough loaf looks stunning. Sourdough is an area where I've yet to succeed...
 
Morning Glory said:
Your sourdough loaf looks stunning. Sourdough is an area where I've yet to succeed...
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It was a steep learning curve for me -

First step: forget everything you know about bread.

Second step: fail to cook an edible sourdough loaf 10 times in a row (included in this step is - survive the mental anguish of being an expert at 20 different types of bread and then ask yourself why you cant fu#*ing get this bread right)

Third step: produce one decent loaf, tell yourself that you have finally cracked it. Confidently prepare another loaf. Make 5 more loaves that were edible but not as good as the one decent one. Realise it was luck.

Fourth step: blame your starter and take no responsibility for your bread not being perfect.

Fifth step: keep at it, try different techniques, proofing times, flour ratios, hydrations and cooking methods (dutch oven, pizza stone, wood fired oven, with steam, without steam etc).

Final step: find the method that works for you, your available equipment and your oven. Get used to knowing when its gluten is well developed, how long to proof for (varies on how warm the room is), when its been in the fridge long enough, which angle to score at and how deep, when it is fully cooked and very, very important - be patient once its cooked! No matter how amazing it looks, smells and sounds (crust development), DO NOT CUT IT OPEN BEFORE ITS COOLED!

.....or was it just me that went all through this when learning to make decent sourdough?
 
ChefBasics I haven't touched sourdough yet, but that sounds like my learning process with yeast bread.
For me the most important things are, don't let yourself hang down. Even when the bread is barely edible, I have eaten it or made Croutôns from it, and someday comes the fifth step,
this step is a big juomp towards good quality bread. Take a pencil and paper and start to write down everything
about your last bread, or like me, just think about your last breads.
What ingredients did you use, hydration,
how long and hard did you knead your bread, rising time/temperature, baking time/temperature, do you use a pan of water to create a moisture environment.
Here an advise from a scientist how loves food Peter Barham:
make a dough for white bread after a standard recipe, split it into smaller portions, in the size of small buns. Change the liquidity of the individual buns by adding very small amounts of measured water (tsp or drops from a pipette) and don't forget to write it down somewhere, because you have to know in which dough is what percentage of water in comparison to the flour. Now bake them until they look good, try everyone and take your favorite bun hydration for the next experiment. You can make the same experiment with the amount of salt, sugar, fat, or yeast, baking time and baking temperature to create your perfect bread.
Have fun and stay healthy
 
Growing up we had sandwiches, lots of them, and toast at breakfast. As an adult I found I was only eating it when going out to eat and I never baked it very often. I had a bread maker when I was in my late 20s that I played around with and made some good, hearty and healthy breads, but I became disinterested after awhile. After moving to Ohio a little over 20 years ago, I found myself buying it for the kids but I still rarely ate it.

Now that the kids are grown, if I bake some bread, we eat it, or at least most of it (the squirrels usually get it after about 4 days). I rarely buy bread, though I did buy a loaf of dark pumpernickel to go with a spinach veggie dip over the holidays. I can go weeks without even thinking about bread. I just made a loaf of white bread a few days ago, so now we are having eggs and toast for breakfast and toasted bread to dip with soup in the evenings. When it's gone I will not be interested in it for awhile, most likely. Except for the occasional English muffins that I will buy to make breakfast sandwiches and eggs Benedict, and of course I will make a few bagels for a smoked salmon breakfast.
 
As far as Bread dominating my diet, consider this. I still have 1/2 a loaf of store bought Wheat Bread and I've had that loaf for some time now. I just don't seem to be able to use it up - and I want to, so that I can go forward with baking my own Bread.

The truth is that over the past weeks, I have been making meals, entirely without Bread or at best, used Buns for some sandwiches. Bread does not rule my Meal planning or consumption.
 
PabloLerntKochen said:
Make Croutôns if it's still possible or bread salad/pudding/dumplings.
Or grind them through a mircroplane and make bread crumbs.
Stay healthy
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Half of my freezer, it seems, is taken up with frozen ends of various loaves of bread, just waiting to be turned into croutons and breadcrumbs. :)
 
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