John B. Kirk
Quito, Ecuador
6/4/18
‘Home Baked Breads for Busy People II’: First Half of Class Handout
Introduction
In the U.S. and the world today, obesity and a healthy diet are more important issues than ever. I have a bread-baking system for the home that was published on the Internet at http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext /ED407550.pdf about ten years ago. It’s from a 1997 adult education class entitled ‘Home-Baked Breads for Busy People’ and enables people to have home-made bread on a daily basis using frozen dough. I have now written a follow-up, Part II, which addresses home-made bread for a healthy diet and improves on the system for fresh bread on a daily basis. It also addresses ways that you can help your family adjust to whole grain breads if they’re used to eating white breads.
I am a retired ESL teacher living in Quito, Ecuador and would like to freely offer my home-baking ideas in a new, two hour class at the adult education level. Please read more if you’d like to learn about using a frozen dough and a sour dough refrigerator system for making fast, healthy, inexpensive home-made breads and pizza… Most supermarkets only use frozen dough for their bread products.
‘Part II’ introduces ideas with simplicity, healthfulness and economic benefits. The ‘Part II’ system takes some practical, relatively unknown, timesaving baking techniques which when used with whole grain flours and fruit produce a very healthy and tasty product.
The techniques allow anyone with a basic education, common kitchen, and the desire of a good, frugal diet to easily prepare the recipes for basic breads and pizza on a daily basis that before they thought that they only had time to buy. Of course, people with health problems can learn this new hobby using the above techniques with ingredients and proportions suggested by their doctors. Also important for new, homemade bread bakers is what they won’t be eating, as people sometimes don’t eat the right foods!
Have Bread Ready to Eat in 10 Minutes
‘How can you have bread ready to eat in 10 minutes?’ I’m not counting the time it takes to make or bake it – just to pan it and put it into the oven. You can make the dough in bulk, freeze it and take out pieces from the freezer to use for as long as several weeks. And what makes it healthy? See right below in the third paragraph. I’d like to introduce bread making with frozen dough and also connect you to a Mother Earth link for fast sour dough bread with a refrigerator system which you can find in the list of links at the end of this article.
Description of the Quality
Baking with home-made frozen dough can make some breads that are healthy, delicious, inexpensive and sometimes superior to bread you can buy, as you can use your own ingredients. It’s so good that in some cases (such as with certain types of rolls and pizza) that if you didn’t tell someone, they’d probably never know that you didn’t make it from scratch that very day. And it’s not hard to make!
The difference in flavor and texture between fresh and frozen dough is much less than commonly thought, and at home you can use the ingredients that suit you best such as freshly ground flours, cooked whole grains, fresh fruit, honey, and olive oil without much of a difference in price, as the whole effort is relatively inexpensive. Also, you can adjust the amount of salt to your needs, and a little olive or canola oil is healthy for you. Using the above ingredients will make you bread taste different, but you might enjoy the taste – even though it’s different than what the food scientists think the common denominator should be or what a commercial bakery can afford to do!
Baking Time
The amount of time needed to bake the end product is minimal because most of the work was done before you froze the dough. You can make dough to freeze possibly weekly or twice per month, and you can bake most mornings and have rolls ready to eat in about an hour from the time you walk into the kitchen.
Traditional bread dough needs to be kneaded, set to rise, punched down, and allowed to rise again. Few busy people can go through this every day, but you might want to do it once or twice per month. You can have fresh baked bread from your own kitchen every morning using this system.
What about bread machines? The machines solve the time problem and turn out uniformly decent loaves. They can be a good addition to your kitchen. Give them a try if they seem good to you! Below I’ve attached some sites with videos and others with written directions and pictures to show the basics of how you can bake you own bread by hand or machine.
Advantages for Home Chefs and/or People with Digestive Problems
As a person who has suffered from ulcerative colitis for 15 years and now a senior citizen, I can say that in comparison with store and bakery bought products, my homemade bread helps me my digestive system a good 5-15% if I follow recommendations for diet and exercise, as well.
The reason is that I follow recipes determined by my doctor over the long term that include the recommended percentages of ingredients that are best for me and not necessary for the public. I also buy the best and the freshest ingredients available. Not only do I enjoy making bread, but it’s not that expensive, it’s a healthy thing to do, and it’s a hobby which keeps me moving and that I can share with others.
It’s active because I need to go to different stores to obtain the best products, and sometimes I can include some walking. Some of these stores are small and I get to know other people with my hobby who are often very interested in discussing it with me. Also, I do light exercise in my kitchen making and baking the dough, and this is good. Finally, bread baking opens a world of cultural variety and there are immediate rewards! Using my frozen dough system lets me make a number of portions to enjoy when I want. And they say the best way to stay active is to be active!
The quotation below is from the Harvard T.H. Chan Public School of Health website – The Nutrition Source: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/whole-grains/. It indicates how whole grains are important for maintaining your health.
“Choose whole grains instead of refined grains…
- Fiber helps lower cholesterol as well as move waste through the digestive tract.
- Fiber may also help prevent the formation of small blood clots that can trigger heart attacks or strokes…”
“The invention of industrialized roller mills in the late 19th century changed the way we process grains. Milling strips away the bran and germ and leaves only the soft, easy-to-digest endosperm. Without the fibrous bran, the grain is easier to chew. The germ is removed because of its fat content, which can limit the shelf life of processed wheat products…”
As the quotation indicates, home-baked bread made with the best ingredients can be beneficial for those who are watching their diet. Whole flours, grains, fresh fruit and a modest amount of sweetener and nuts if preferred are not overly caloric, are very nutritional, and give a more sustained feeling of fullness than products made with white flour, inexpensive oil and sugar based ingredients – you’re integrating a power packed, natural food into your diet. And in terms of body weight, whole grains give you a sense of fullness so you don’t want to eat so much.
The Economic Benefits of Baking Your Own Bread
If you eat your own bread, supplement it only occasionally, eat several of your own pizzas per month, at the end of the year you might have an extra week’s pay in your pocket – think of the relatively expensive prepared food and snacks you won’t have bought. It’s also a great addition to the repertoire of a brown bag specialist!
Four Timesaving Surprises for Baking with Frozen Dough
Homemade bread has a mystique where people feel that its proper preparation and consumption require that it be made and baked from scratch and eaten the same day. With the time, effort and knowledge involved in the preparation, few people in our busy world do it, preferring to shop at their local bakeries and supermarkets and settling for third best. And how many days old are the prepared snacks that you buy? In my opinion, second best is usually the method described here if you can do it, but then again, it’s always good to have some variety!
Making frozen dough in large quantities can overcome the preparation problem. And for people who enjoy cooking and/or for those who cook for a healthy, economic lifestyle and don’t mind giving up a little for a whole lot, they can work the baking into their daily schedule without too much extra effort – here’s how! The following bread making system works best with roll size breads baked in a muffin pan. It’s hard to beat hot bread, especially when you know its ingredients!
First, using thawed dough, you can pan your plain breads with nuts if desired in the evening, cover them with plastic, keep them in the refrigerator, and take them out and directly bake them in a hot oven in the morning – they will have risen during the night!
Second, and most surprisingly! – you can put frozen dough in the refrigerator in the evening and in the morning, pan it and put it right into a pre-heated oven, and it will rise normally as it bakes – there’s no need (no pun intended) to let it rise on the counter or in a proofing oven!
If you sometimes like to add fresh fruit to the dough (I do it almost every day), you can prepare the fruit the night before, keep it in the refrigerator, add it to the cold dough in the morning, shape your breads, put them in a muffin pan, and pop them in a hot oven at about 375 degrees. The oven should be hot because that way the dough won’t rise and fall to the side as it’s baking – it will be shaped by the heat as it’s rising. It’s important to thaw the dough in the refrigerator during the night to avoid food borne illnesses that could occur if you thaw it at room temperature.
Third, rolls baked in a muffin pan will bake and cool about an hour faster than a full-size loaf of bread and you won’t need to deal with slicing it. My rolls baked with cold dough from the fridge with a lot of fresh fruit will bake in about 45 minutes at about 375 degrees and cool in 25 minutes, whereas a full-size loaf with the same ingredients needs about 70 minutes to bake and 60 minutes to cool.
You can also bake an assortment of rolls for the day at the same time in a muffin pan, such as with different types of fruits, jams, nuts, or just plain. The rolls will also maintain their shape in a muffin pan when adding a large amount of fresh fruit, whereas when baking a full-size loaf of bread, it might be on the heavy side and not rise so well.
Fourth, using a hot, pre-heated oven with your basic thawed dough in the evening, you can make a gourmet pizza or other Italian specialty for dinner in about the same amount of time you make many other meals. I’ll explain more about this later…
Conclusion
If you would like to learn how to bake five basic breads including rolls on a daily basis using the frozen dough system and how to use the refrigerator-based sour dough technique from Mother Earth News, simply find 4 or more other people who would like to attend John’s 2 hour class and contact John to set up a time. I will distribute the list of websites during the class.