Making Beeswax Bread Bags

We go through a lot of sourdough bread. Tricia makes 2 big loaves every other week in addition to bagels, po boy buns and hamburger buns.  The loaves are kept beneath a cake dome, but the bread doesn't stay soft for long and starts getting stale and even begins to mold before we can finish it.  Tricia began looking for a solution and found one - Beeswax Bread bags!  She ordered some organic cotton fabric from Azure Standard and cut the fabric as she needed.

She began to sew the pieces of fabric into the shape of a bag.

These bags will have a drawstring on top for sealing up the bread and keeping the loaves airtight and fresh.

The next thing needed is beeswax.  Fortunately, each time we extract honey, we save all of the cappings and render the beeswax.  We end up with big disks of beeswax.  We make lip balm (chapstick or carmex) by adding essential oils (eucalyptus and peppermint) to the beeswax and castor oil.

But back to our beeswax bread bag project - the beeswax is melted in a crock pot.

The melted beeswax is poured over the cotton bread bags.

You must work fast as the beeswax cools and hardens quickly.

You want to make sure the entire bag is coated on both sides, so a bread-making tool is used to spread the beeswax on the entire surface area.

Once the bag is coated with beeswax, it goes into the oven at 250 degrees F for 10 minutes.  The oven is used as the heat evens out the wax and gets the edges coated.

We allow the bag to hang and dry for a bit.

And now for the test.  A big fresh loaf of sour dough bread goes into the bag for safekeeping.

The drawstring is pulled tight and the bread is now sealed up - better than Saranwrap.

Now we'll test things out and see if this keeps the bread fresher for longer.  Will it stop the bread from getting hard and going stale and molding?  We will soon know.

Our Daily Bread(s)

Can't remember the last time we purchased a loaf of bread at the grocery store.  When Tricia started making sourdough bread, we both decided that it would be homemade sourdough from then on.  It's just so good.  Generally, we go through two loaves a week.  We can eat through half a loaf when the two loaves come out of the oven, hot and steamy, slathered with copious amounts of butter.

But there's more than just regular loaves of sourdough bread.  The sourdough starter can be used in many different types of recipes.  In addition to the regular loaves, we make bagels and keep some always frozen.  They're easy to pop out, thaw and make a bagel sandwich for lunch, or spread cream cheese on for a snack, or to eat with breakfast.

Last week Tricia made focaccia with kalamata olives and fresh rosemary and olive oil drizzled on top.  Here it is about to go into the oven:

Here it is shortly thereafter, with only about a quarter of it remaining... Oops!  

Of course there's the sourdough cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing.  These are top notch, I tell ya.

I remember in both elementary and high school, the lunchroom ladies were famous for their hot yeast rolls.  They were so buttery and delicious!  They weren't sourdough, but Tricia wanted to attempt to recreate the same roll, albeit with sourdough.  So a trial batch went in the oven.

We had to put a pat of butter on top and try it out.

So good, I tell ya.  For lunch we split a roll in half and picked some fresh lettuce that we laid inside the roll and topped with some egg salad.  As the days are getting longer now, we have more than enough eggs.  It made for a nice little lunch!  Sourdough is fantastic.  We were trying to figure out when we first started it.  We can't remember.  You have to feed the starter and keep it going.  Tricia doesn't think it's been 10 years, but 7 to 8 years for sure.  I hope we can keep it living for years and years to come.

Our Daily Bread

 

Image Credit

This famed photograph hangs in the kitchen of my childhood home.  Mom and Dad have it overlooking the kitchen table.  An interesting background behind the "Grace" photograph can be found HERE. It was named the State photo of Minnesota.  The photo evokes thoughts of piety, simplicity, and gratitude to God for providing what we need each day.  He is faithful.

Tricia was on a tear in the kitchen the other day with her sour dough.  She made two loaves of sour dough bread and then made bagels.  I had been after her to make some homemade rolls that remind me of being in elementary school in the 70's.  The lunchroom ladies would make these homemade rolls that they would slather butter on the tops when they would remove the silver trays full of hot rolls from the oven.  It smelled so good and tasted heavenly!  Did they make rolls like that at your school?  Can you remember that?

Although we don't have those big silver trays, nor do we have a big, commercial oven, but my bride made me some homemade rolls!

Talk about lovin' from the oven!  We immediately put real butter on top and ate one while it was piping hot.  

But wait, there's more daily bread.  Tricia decided to make homemade cinnamon rolls - a sour dough variety.  This photo is me peering into the oven anticipating the buzzer going off to signify they're done.

Soon they were done and were placed on the counter to cool.

I wish you could smell this sticky goodness.  At the time of this photo, they were still too hot to try to eat.  The cinnamon sugar you see oozing out the top is like molten lava.  If you tried to put it in your mouth, it would burn the skin right off the roof of your mouth.  Lord, give me patience.

But good things come to those who wait.  While I poured some coffee and waited for the sour dough cinnamon rolls to cool, my wife had made a cream cheese icing for the cinnamon rolls.

We are indeed thankful for Our Daily Bread, from both a literal and a spiritual standpoint.

Delicious Sourdough Bread

“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.” James Beard, the cook book author

We've been making sourdough bread for a long time.  It is the main bread that we eat and we average about a loaf a week.  Tricia had been watching videos showing the technique and recipe for making "Artisan Sourdough Bread."  We enjoy the tried and true, but it's always nice to try something new.  I peeked in on her as she added her sourdough starter and began folding the dough.  You fold the dough, let it sit for 30 minutes.  Then you must stretch and fold every 30 minutes for two hours.  Let it rise for 4-6 hours.  Stretch and fold again and make your loaf and let it rise for 2-3 more hours.  It was cool in the house, so she covered it and let it rise.

This bread doesn't go in a loaf pan like we normally do.  It is baked in a round.  Tricia flipped the dough over onto some parchment paper and used a razor blade to score the dough.

Meanwhile she's had a cast iron dutch oven in an oven heated to 500 degrees for 30 minutes.  Yep, that's hot!  Then she pulled the pot out of the oven.

We dropped the dough into the hot cast iron pot with the parchment paper on the bottom.  I was kind of afraid that the paper was going to catch on fire, but it didn't.

Into the oven it went.  You bake it with lid on for 20 minutes at 450 degrees.  Then you take the lid off for 15 minutes or until it is a good color.

This is the color we were looking for!

At this point you cure the bread.  Turn the oven off, crack the door open and leave for 20 minutes.

At this point we took it out of the pot and set it on the counter.

You are supposed to wait to cut into it.  We tried, we really did.  I confess that we ended up cutting into it.  You can see the steam rising from the warm bread.  Just a beautiful loaf of bread.

A little butter on top and we were ready to sample it.

I give this a five star rating!  Our normal sourdough bread is good, but this is at a whole other level.  The taste, the texture was superb.  Crusty on the outside and perfect on the inside.  I'm embarrassed to tell you that we sat there in the kitchen and cut slice after slice of bread.  Before we knew it, almost half the loaf was gone!

This was a hit.  I told Tricia that this needs to be in the rotation.  We learned that it freezes well.  I just noticed that Tricia is getting another batch of starter out to begin making the next loaf.  Can't wait!!

Our Daily Bread

We talk a lot of simple pleasures in life.  One of those simple pleasures for us is a loaf of homemade sourdough bread.  Tricia keeps a batch of sourdough starter going at all times as she bakes a loaf of bread each week.  I can't remember when we last bought a loaf of bread from the grocery store.  The wholegrain bread we make is from a mixture of spelt and kamut wheat. 

The sourdough starter smells so good.  Oftentimes I'll walk in the kitchen and Tricia is popping the top off the starter to smell the fermentation going on.  She was getting everything ready last night to make a fresh loaf, so I thought I'd grab my camera and document the process.  Here she's poured some of the wheat flour into the mixing bowl and added the starter.

The dough hook attachment on the mixer works the dough and gets it all kneaded and ready.

For the last ten minutes, the dough is taken out of the mixer.  Tricia kneads it, folds it, presses it and works it really hard.

Then she works it some more.  The bread changes form with the kneading, getting more elasticity.

We like to bake in stoneware loaf pans.  The stoneware is brushed down with coconut oil so the bread will pop out with ease after cooking.  Then we place the dough in the stoneware.

We cover it with a dishrag and will allow it to proof overnight.  In the winter time, when the house is cooler, we'll proof it in the warmer of the oven.

We began proofing at 10 pm.  Then here we are the next morning at 6 am.  Look at the difference of the photo above with the one below.  You can judge how much it has risen by looking at the distance between the rag and the bottom of the light plug receptacle in each.

The bread is put into the oven.  We call it Lovin' in the oven.  In just a skinny minute or two, the aroma of freshly baking bread fills the home with an irresistible fragrance.

“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.” – James Beard

James Beard is right!  It is vitally important to cut a slice off while the bread is fresh from the oven, warm and soft.  I will fight you for the heel!  Spread some good homemade butter on the warm slice and it'll take your breath away.  That's some of the last butter from our cows for a while since we dried the cows off.

Give us this day, our daily bread...

Sometimes It's A Good Thing to Loaf Around

We have a half gallon mason jar we keep in the fridge with some sour dough starter in it.  At first glance, it looks like something that was on a back shelf that got forgotten about.

At second glance it even looks worse.  If you unscrew the top, there is a crusty formation on the rim and sides of the jar.  If you peer down into the jar, the concoction is bubbling.  If you put your nose next to the top of the jar, it smells...  GREAT!  The sour dough starter has a sour, but slightly sweet smell.

When I walked in from work, Tricia had just pulled a loaf of sourdough bread out of the proofer.  The bread had risen.  I reached out to touch it, but that wasn't a good idea.  You don't want it to fall.  We placed it in the oven and I went outside to pick purple hull peas, black-eyed peas, and okra.  My task was to be back inside in about twenty minutes to pull the hot loaf of sour dough bread out of the oven.

I walked back in to a wonderful aroma of fresh baked bread wafting through the kitchen.  I pulled the golden brown perfect loaf of bread out of the oven and admired it for a second.

Can we make it a little more perfect?  Yes.  Yes, we can.  We'll slather some butter over the top of the warm loaf of bread and allow it to melt into the top of the bread.

I'll stop the world and melt with you.  You've seen the difference and it's getting better all the time.

Some people don't like the heel of the bread.  I do.  It's my favorite part.  I like to cut a slice while it is still hot and put some more butter on it. 

Taking a bite out of crime

This is as good as it gets.  Who says it's a bad thing to loaf around?