Garbage That GOO!

Bread is my trigger food

And I KNOW it is my weak point. So why, oh why did I make bread yesterday? Was I craving it? Nope. Rarely eat it these days, miss it a little, get it sometimes at restaurants and don't really think about it much.

But I wanted to try making whole wheat bread from scratch with my Vita-Mix Super 5200. So out of sheer curiosity, I made bread, straight from hard red winter wheat berries.

Vita-Mix suggests that you freeze your wheat berries, since the grinding process generates heat. I measured out the required amount of frozen wheat berries into the dry blade container with some sea salt.

Next step was proofing the yeast. Think warm water, yeast and honey. At the end of the recipe, Vita-Mix suggested using cold water if you were grinding your wheat flour from berries. Oops. Too late.

Then, the grinding. This took a minute. The dry container worked perfectly, as advertised.

I added my yeast mixture, plus olive oil and a little lemon juice to the fresh flour, just as it sat in the container. I ran the machine for ONE SECOND on HIGH to mix!

Kneading involved setting the machine on high and quickly turning it on and off five times in succession. That helped mix it the rest of the way as well. You take off the lid, push the dough to the center with a spatula, put the lid back on and repeat this cycle four more times. At that point, the recipe suggested to do it yet a sixth time to help get the dough up in a ball on the blades for easier removal.

Well... dough removal was MOSTLY easy, but there was a fair amount of dough left stuck under the blades. They don't mention that bit. I dug that out with a spatula and my fingers (Carefully with the fingers!) and added it to my dough ball. I then kneaded it a little by hand on a lightly floured cutting board, shaped it and put it into a greased 8" x 4" bread pan. Let rise 20 minutes, popped it into the pre-heated oven to bake at 350F for 35 minutes. Took longer to type this post than to make the bread!

It was a smallish loaf. Tasted great! No big air holes, very consistent crumb. I ate a heel with a little butter. Yum!

Trouble is, an hour later the existence of that loaf of bread (by now cooled, sliced, bagged and in the freezer) was FESTERING IN MY BRAIN! Sometimes, I manage to bake bread, freeze it and stay away from it until I want a slice to go with soup or something. Not this time! One taste was not enough.

I know I should've eaten a proper meal so I wouldn't have been hungry. Instead, I got a slice out from the freezer and ate it, warmed from the microwave. And it was good! Unfortunately, that slice was followed by another. And still another, until finally, the whole small loaf was GONE! URP!

All I can say is that I ate no further the rest of the evening. Now you know why I don't keep bread around!

Next time, I'll try and take pictures. I have more wheat berries and I think my husband will want to see this Vita-Mix trick. Here's hoping I learn some more control by then!