I'm making my first on-my-own attempt to bake fresh home-made bread today. I'm using the recipe that my grandmother passed on to her daughters, and which may well have come from farther back than her since she was born and raised in Iowa in 1919, back when all women did was bake. 
It's not pure wheat bread, or pure white bread. It uses about a 1 to 2 ratio of wheat to white flour. And it doesn't come out like store bought bread with a dark crust and soft mushy insides; it's a pretty thick bread inside, not hard but not squishy.
I grew up eating this bread, my grandmother made it constantly and the smell of yeast brings up good feelings (until today it had been quite some time since I smelled yeast being used). Then she started to get a little too old to make it very often, so my mom started making it once in a while. Eventually Grandma just couldn't do it anymore (she turned 82 this year), she just doesn't have the strength for kneading the dough (and a pox on you if you're thinking "just use a bread machine".
My mom still makes it, but she lives in Florida and I'm in Massachusetts, so I only get to eat it once a year if I rely on her (freezing it and bringing it home with me is just too much trouble). I've helped her make the bread before, but she has the recipe memorized so I was always just listening to her describe how to do it and never really remembered everything. So I had her email it to me, and today I put it all together.
Right now I'm waiting for it to go through the first rising process before I divide the dough into loaves for baking.
Naturally I'll have pictures available.
It's not pure wheat bread, or pure white bread. It uses about a 1 to 2 ratio of wheat to white flour. And it doesn't come out like store bought bread with a dark crust and soft mushy insides; it's a pretty thick bread inside, not hard but not squishy.I grew up eating this bread, my grandmother made it constantly and the smell of yeast brings up good feelings (until today it had been quite some time since I smelled yeast being used). Then she started to get a little too old to make it very often, so my mom started making it once in a while. Eventually Grandma just couldn't do it anymore (she turned 82 this year), she just doesn't have the strength for kneading the dough (and a pox on you if you're thinking "just use a bread machine"
.My mom still makes it, but she lives in Florida and I'm in Massachusetts, so I only get to eat it once a year if I rely on her (freezing it and bringing it home with me is just too much trouble). I've helped her make the bread before, but she has the recipe memorized so I was always just listening to her describe how to do it and never really remembered everything. So I had her email it to me, and today I put it all together.
Right now I'm waiting for it to go through the first rising process before I divide the dough into loaves for baking.
Naturally I'll have pictures available.
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