Home Made Bread

Fresh and Delicious from Your Very Own Kitchen

Fill your home with the delicious aroma of freshly baked bread.  Start with the flour or the grain and Store-It Foods can assist you in finding just the right tools that can help to bring about those delectable, mouth watering scents.

You start, of course, with the ingredients.  Primary amongst these is the flour.  For the freshest taste and the most nutrition (wheat can lose an astounding 45% of it's nutrients within the first 24 hours of having been ground into flour and by the time 72 hours has passed it has lost a whopping 90%!) you will want to grind your own.  This also makes a great deal of sense if wheat and other grains have been made a part of your home storage program.  After all, you will need a means to use them.

A good grinder, then, makes it possible for you to use the freshest and most nutritious whole wheat flour possible.  The same applies for other grains.  When it comes to grain mills, if you do not yet have one, you have many good machines from which to choose, including a possible selection from one of the top makes and models shown here.

These, of course, are just a sampling of what is available, and you will note that only one hand mill is shown, and that is a deluxe model.  You should, however, do what is best for you.  Discuss it with the family.  Compare and evaluate.  Generally, a good electric mill will work much more efficiently and quickly than will a manual grinder.  The argument that a hand mill will work whether or not there is electricity is a good one, but if you are planning on baking your bread in an electric oven, then, if there is a lack of power, you are not going to be baking any bread whether you have a manual mill or not.  On the other hand, manually operated grain mills can be much less expensive, and that could be an important factor.

Bread dough can be mixed by hand.  It's been done that way for centuries.  A  bread mixer, however, can make life so much easier, especially if you intend to make bread making more than just an occasional occurrence in your kitchen.  There are machines that are designed to tackle that specific task and that task only, but the one shown here, the Mix n’ Blend II from Blendtec, provides you with that bread making ability as well as providing versatility in other food preparation tasks.  It will mix, blend, and whip as well as knead.  Many labor intensive jobs are suddenly made easy.

features a smart auto-knead button

You've assembleld your ingredients.  You've followed your recipe.  You've prepared the bread dough. The last step is to bake the bread. That means you drop the dough into loaf pans, allow the loaves to rise, and finally pop the pans into your preheated oven.  Then you wait the requisite time, and when the oven timer pings you are ready to remove those golden brown, deliciously aromatic loaves of freshly baked bread.

There is, though, one other option that many home bakers are now following.  You could make use of a bread maker.  This is simply a small, countertop oven that, as the name implies, is used to bake bread. 

Usually programable, with numerous bread settings (all of them automatic), this can be another kitchen labor saver.  The disadvantage:  You can only do one loaf at a time.  The advantage: What it does, it does very well, with very little effort required on the part of the one doing the baking.

Fresh bread can be difficult to slice, especially if it is very, very fresh and still warm from the oven.  Yet that is the time to get the most flavor and the most enjoyment.  An ordinary chef's knife simply does not do the job.  No matter how sharp, there is a tendency to crush the loaf rather than cut into it.

The answer comes in the form of a bread knife such as the superior quality, Furi knife shown above.  Designed to slice bread, including these fresh loaves, the serrated blade saws into the loaf rather than piercing it. Bread, with its hard exterior and soft interior, requires this sort of treatment.  Without it you may end up with compressed slices that are certainly less visually appealing, if not less tantalizing to the taste buds.  If you do not yet own a bread knife, this modest investment will be well worth it.