Victoria Day Bread Winners

What's this? A bonus post? Yup. Since I forgot when I was in Calgary, I'm making it up to y'all.

Money is tough these days. America is doing a good job of ruining the world economy and food is getting more expensive. We like to buy some Canadian Rye bread and it is almost 7 bucks a loaf now. I could make bread for cheaper than that.

So, I have.

The last time I made bread was when I worked at the Weyburn Inn. Brace yourself for this one, Pilot. That was over TWENTY YEARS AGO. Jesus Christ, how time flies.

So, I got stuff together a couple weeks ago, got out our existing Pyrex bread pan and bought a new metal one. I started mixing and then realized I didn't have enough flour. No matter. We had almond flour and the recipe says I could use that and just use a little less. No worries. I had already mixed the first bunch of wheat flour in, I'd just finish with the almond. Might taste weird, but I was sure it would be fine.

The whole time I mixed, my brain just kept saying, this doesn't seem right. I had used more almond flour than I would have used wheat flour and it was still just too sticky. After it rose it collapsed super easy and when I stuck the two pans in the oven, as they hit the heat they both deflated. I kept pushing though. I pulled them out of the oven. The looked alright on the outside, but had that sag in the middle that some cakes get. I flipped over the metal pan to get the loaf out and just the middle came out. The sides stuck hard despite oiling the non-stick coating. Lets try the glass one! Flip tap, smash. Split the pan it two.

So, I failed about as bad as I could. But what about the taste? Not too bad, but not great. The almond flour made it taste funky. Not something I'd want to eat. OK. So, it all went bad, but since it had been TWENTY YEARS! I was like cool. I failed and learnt what I can't do. All in all I was pretty sure it wasn't the procedure that failed. It was the ingredients.

Cut to this past weekend with a fresh bag of flour. I did everything the same and upon initial mix of the flour, before I even add the rest of the flour to get it to the right consistency, it looked way better.

And so with that, dear reader, I finished making two loaves of bread yesterday. One is already gone and the other half gone so I made another batch today. We're excited to have fresh bread to were scarfing it down.

It's not the best bread I've ever had, but I can tweek it. It was a little floury, but not too bad. The recipe also calls for sugar OR honey and I feel honey could add some nice flavour.

I don't want to go too hard though. I don't want to have to take care of a sourdough starter or anything. I'm just going to try to save a few bucks making some bread and if we still have to buy some of the regular stuff to supplement our supply, so be it. I'm just happy it worked this time.