Leida

Thanks to a lot of advice I’ve got, the books, trial and error, I managed to corner bread-baking for my high-altitude location. I discovered that:

- home-made bread is a little bit denser than store-bought, so it can be sliced much thinner reducing calories per slice

-there are really very few ingredients needed to bake a good bread.

-it’s crucial to stay on top of the process watching the bread - it may be the altitude.

-a few tricks such as folding the dough and using the oven for raising the dough help a huge deal.

 -I didn’t have much success with sour-dough.

-Lemon juice is helpful!

 My favorite bread so far? It’s 2.5 whole wheat + dark rye (1/2 cup), with 3 tbsp of olive oil (rubbed in before forming dough), 1 tbsp of lemon juice, 2 tsp of yeast, 1 tsp of sugar, 1 tsp of salt and 1 tbsp each of the yellow mustard seeds, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, flax seeds + 2 tbsp of sunflower seeds. I roast all the seeds lightly. It’s a very nice light bread with mild flavors, and as far as I can tell super-healthy. I like caraway seed myself, but the baby doesn’t so as much as I was tempted by it or fennel seeds, I didn’t add them in I only had to buy bread once this week, hoping to bake all my own the next week!

NOTE: liquid volumes & temperatures differ slightly for lower altitudes - I’d start with 1 tbsp of oil less and reduce heat by 15 degrees on low altitudes. 

 The way I assemble it is:

 Toast seeds and set to cool.

Warm up the house to 24 C. Add sugar and yest to 1 glass measuring cup of warm water (comfortable to hold your fingers in), mix with a fork. Give it at least 5 min till foaming wildly.

In one huge bowl sift and mix flours and salt. Rubb in oil, like for making crust. Add yeast and lemon juice. Mix till the dough came together in a ball. Cover with the safe-same inverted bowl and let rest for 15 min.

Knead for 5 or so minutes till nice and elastic in the bowl. Add a bit of skim milk if the dough is too dry. Knead in the seeds.

Set oven to the lowest setting (170 F in my case), turn it off. Spray my bowl with oil spray and roll the dough to oil it. Pull the cirano-wrap over the bowl and put in the oven (if it feels too hot, open it for a bit to make it feel just like a relatively hot room). Put the dough in, close the door and check in 40 min to see if dough increased twice in size (don’t let go over that!)

Fold the dough (press it from a round shape into an oval and then fold the sides in in thirds, fold in half. Cover up again, let rise for 40 min or so, till doubles, in the oven.

Take it out, place one grill rack to the top 1/3 of the oven, and another - to the very bottom. Preheat oven to 475 F.

Spray loaf pan with oil spray, shape the loaf (I lightly roll my folded dough out), place in the pan, cover with a wet but not dripping towel and put on the oven top to rise two-fold.

Once the loaf is all nice and puffy, spray the top with the oil spray and sprinkle with spice or sea salt if desired. Empty a tray of ice-cubes onto a cookie sheet and slide it into the bottom rack. At the same time put the loaf on the top rack. Close the oven door and reducce heat to 415 F.  Bake for 40 minutes. Remove from the oven, let sit in the pan for 10 or so minutes. Put on the cooling rack.

You can slice it from there on, and keep on a wooden board with the cut side down. I do wrap it in a plastic bacg for the night though.

Yum!