Homemade Bread

We make bread almost daily at our house.  Not only are we big bread eaters, but our family also sells homemade bread in our business.  Our speciality is sourdough bread.

We got some starter from a dear friend, LMM, who had starter that was known to be 30 years old!  We keep two very large containers full of starter going because we make between 3 and 6 loaves at least 5x a week.

We make cinnamon sourdough, plain sourdough, and garlic cheese sourdough breads to sell.  Our family eats the day old bread that didn't sell.

One advantage of homemade bread is that you know exactly what is in it.  And it doesn't have artificial preservatives and chemicals, a major plus for those who prefer healthier foods for their families.  The taste of fresh baked bread is on a whole other level than store-bought bread.

Our daily routine involves feeding the starters every morning and letting them sit out all day.  In the evening, we use the starter to mix our dough, cover it, and let it sit out rising overnight.  The next morning, we kneed our dough and divide it into portions which we form into loaves, place into pans, and let rise all day.  That evening, we bake our bread.  None of the steps take very much time--it's the sort of thing that you can do in a couple of minutes here and there in the morning and evening.  But it gives the phrase "our daily bread" a whole new meaning!

If you don't need the volume of bread that we do, you can use the starter only once or twice a week, even once every two weeks, leaving it in the fridge in between times.

We make toast, garlic toast, cin toast, French toast, grilled cheese sandwiches, and other fresh sandwiches out of our bread.  And if we are lucky enough to get it hot from the oven, we devour it plain.

We also use the sourdough to make homemade pizza crusts and *hot pocket* type meals.

Anyone can do this.  My daughter, aged 12, has been in charge of making the bread for our use and for our business for a year and a half now.

You can find many different recipes online for sourdough starters--they don't have to be old to be useful--and those recipes will give you instructions on using the starter to make bread and other things like pancakes.