Order In Chaos

Our daily bread

Instructions for making our staple bread recipe.

Locate rather well-loved bread recipe (complete with scribbled maps, food storage inventory, important phone numbers, scripture quotes, yogurt making notes, grocery lists, etc, etc).

Commit for the hundredth time to recopy the recipe onto something that would look prettier on the fridge.

Get out one (mostly) clean bosch:

Add 3 TB yeast:

1 TB sugar

7.5 c water

3 eggs (you’ll want to crack them open and add them to the mixer. Just in case it’s not obvious)

3/4 c honey

A lot of flour (you’ll eventually add about 18c, at this point though, start with maybe 6):

Let your kids add some flour too. Because baking bread just doesn’t feel right unless there is flour everywhere.

Now that you have created a very hazardous situation by loading a bosch full of water and adding powdery light flour…

…give the ingredients a thrilling whizz!:

Or, if you are not up for that kind of excitement, mix the flour in gradually with short blasts of mixing power— pulses that will eventually mix it up, but won’t send the water flying out every crack in the lid.

I mix this thin dough for a while—5-10mins?—gradually adding more flour but leaving it very batter-like.

Then, because you forgot to thaw butter before-hand, quickly melt 1/2 c butter:

and add it to your still very soft dough:

add a heaping TB salt:

Now, add more flour:

And mix  until dough forms soft peaks:

Oh wait, thats whipping cream.

Its hard to say how much flour I eventually use. I like my dough quite soft—more sticky than smooth and velvety:

I divide the large ball mass of dough into 2 large bowls and cover with plastic wrap.

Let it rise until almost doubled in size.

Okay, in all honesty I still don’t know how to tell if dough has doubled in size. Something about the concave shape of the bowl and trying to calculate what exactly the level of the dough would be if it doubled in size makes my brain hurt. I really just let it rise until it’s busting out of it’s plastic wrap cover (like that one at the back):

Don’t bother squishing it down, just grab some largish globs and form your buns:

I sit them to rise…

…covered with some towels:

and give the other bowl of escaping dough a pat to keep it at bay:

When the buns have poofed up and are touching each other, I warm up the oven to 350 and stick them in:

Then I give the waiting bowl another whack (repeating as often as necessary to keep it from getting out of the bowl)…

and bake the buns for about 15 mins, or until the tops and bottoms are cooked:

Repeat with the second bowl of dough…unless you are lucky enough to have an oven that can cook 48 buns at once!

Try not to eat them all in one go…

Recipe

Whole Wheat Buns (makes 4 doz large buns):

1 TB sugar

3 TB yeast

7.5 C Warm Water

3 eggs

3/4 c honey

18-21 c flour

3 TB salt

1/2 c butter

(I add the salt and butter at the end due to some whole wheat cooking witchery I subscribe to. The oil supposedly makes it hard for the gluten to form strands and the salt kills the yeast…so I add them at the end to better my chances of cooking fluffy buns. In all likelyhood, the order makes no difference to the outcome. I just haven’t been brave enough to try yet 😉  )

Knead in Bosch 10 mins. Dough should be sticky. Let rise and form into buns. Let buns rise. Bake 350 15-20 mins, or until tops and bottoms are “golden.” Makes 48 large buns.