Our Daily Bread... The joys of making your own.

I decided recently to stop buying bread from the supermarket and to make our own. It was working quite well, courtesy of our bread maker machine but then it decided that the new regime of baking bread everyday was far too much for its over 10 year old frame and it gave up the ghost. Determined to stick to my resolve to make as much of what we consume myself, I resorted to making bread by hand.

I love it! (Except when I discover just before bedtime, that there is no bread for the morning and the girls' school lunchboxes). I mean I had to get used to the fact that it's a bit more time consuming than just sticking all the ingredients into the bread maker and pressing start, but for the most part, I am really enjoying baking our own bread. I like to think that I am walking on the well trodden path of generations of mothers who, working with their hands, made food for their families. Making their daily bread.

My older daughter has also learnt to make bread, and one of her 'duties' in our household is to help with making the bread for our family. She has said she would like to have a bakery when she is older, so we figured a good way to test this desire is to get her to be in charge of the bread.

 She was recently given a sourdough starter by a friend, as a present for her twelfth birthday, and we are now discovering the joys of sourdough bread. It's wonderful stuff! It requires loads of patience and you do need to plan ahead, because it takes much longer to ferment and so on, but it's really delicious and I find it much kinder to the stomach than ordinary bread. I use this recipe.

 Sourdough bread.

Wholewheat and Rye bread.

There's something about the rhythm of making bread that is really good for the soul, and all that dough kneading is a very good stress reliever. I would heartily recommend it. 

xxx