Bounty out o’ the oven…aka I baked bread!

While attempting to eat healthier and eliminate gross amounts of preservatives and refined foods from our diet I started looking at the nutritional information on packaging. It is well known that my husband has long cared more for what’s in our food than I have. Me looking at the back of packages at the grocery store is a new thing.

And I find myself asking the same question over and over again: “WTH?”

Why is there corn syrup in 95% of grocery items? Why is there corn syrup in bread? The simple answer is as Americans we’re addicted to sweet. I’m not going to look it up on Snopes to check its veracity, but I’ve gotten emails that claim that McDonald’s puts sugar in all their food to get us addicted. And you know, you can believe everything you get in your inbox. (And you better forward it to ten friends or else your cat will throw up in your shoes and your lucky fairy will get struck with fairy farting disease).

I’ve also watched several documentaries that have scared me senseless against gènetic@lly modified (GM) seeds and food, and now I also believe that M0nsant0 is the devil in corporation form. My family is slowly but surely releasing ourselves from the death trap that is American processed food.

After I realized that there’s corn syrup in bread I decided to take matters into my own hands. That is, after I sat around on the idea for a couple of months because, let’s face it, as a mom, who has the time to complete a whole thought and then act upon it seeing it to completion?

I believe this is my first foray into oven-baked bread. I’ve tried making bread several times in a bread machine and it always comes out dense and hard to cut. If I’m going to make bread for us to eat I want to be able to slice it. My family still consists of Americans and, shove it Europeans, we like our bread soft and sliced. I’m so amateur at this I don’t even have bread pans yet. I had to make do with a small baking pan I’ve got…it’s probably meant for brownies. But this was the result…free-form loaves:

They are honey wheat loaves made with local honey. They ended up being a little bit heavier than grocery store bread but nowhere near as heavy as the bread machine bread I’ve made before. They were easy to slice as well:

Doesn’t that look like regular sandwich bread?! I am so happy!

I also realized how swirl breads are made after I sliced into my bread. I didn’t pinch mine enough when I rolled it up.

I can just imagine cinnamon and raisins in those rolling holes. Mmmmmm!

I also need to learn to pinch my bread once I fold it over:

It still looked nice once it was cut. In fact, the picture above it is this loaf.

Verdict: I am now planning on making our sandwich bread from scratch. I have organic regular flour (unbleached). I need to see if our store carries organic wheat and bread flour. What I still don’t know (I haven’t done the research) is if organic flour is made from wheat that was grown from GM seeds. M0nsant0 is making it virtually impossible for farmers to grow food without GM seed. Boo!

I’d also like to learn how to make French or Italian bread. I’m a lover of paninis and everyone knows American sliced bread just doesn’t cut it when making a panini!