Bread Making Day

 You know how I like to have a schedule and plan EVERYTHING but that never seems to work. It was so easy to keep a schedule when Vince was working but now that he's retired, we do so many things spur of the moment and that makes it hard to stick to a schedule. I guess it's kinda the same way for all of us retired folks.

But . . my preferred schedule is to make bread on Monday and Thursday. Wednesdays I stitch with Debbie so Mondays and Thursdays are good for making bread. I've also asked Vince to let me know a couple of days ahead of when he's going to need Ezekiel bread and rye bread. I make three loaves of Ezekiel bread and 2 loaves of rye bread at a time.

Yesterday I had started focaccia bread so I was going to finish that today and make hamburger buns so we can have pork burgers Thursday.

I was just about to start breakfast this morning and Vince said "I need Ezekiel bread and rye bread". OK . . forget cooking breakfast. I make about 20 breakfast burritos at a time, wrap them and freeze them for morning like this so I grabbed a couple of those, let them sit out while I started making bread, then baked the burritos and spritzed them with water a few times to keep them from drying out. They were delicious and quick and I'm so happy to have those in the freezer.

This is the recipe I used and it's the best focaccia bread I've ever made. Beware that it needs to sit in the fridge for 18 - 48 hours before baking. I baked it in a 9 x 13 pan and it's plenty thick enough to slice for sandwiches. Panera has several sandwiches with focaccia bread and I love them so I'm probably going to make this recipe again for baking Saturday. I did divide this bread into three pieces, wrapped and froze two of the pieces but I like to have several varieties of bread in the freezer and I was out of focaccia so I'll leave that in there and make more.

Next was Vince's Ezekiel bread. I don't like the taste of it and I detest making it but . . I do it! 

That's the grains/flours that go into the Ezekiel bread. The recipe I use calls for rye, barley, hard red wheat, millet, lentils, pinto beans and great northern beans. There they all are - freshly milled.

Two loaves of this will go into the freezer. Vince eats this every morning as part of his breakfast.

Final bread for the day - rye! That's another one Vince likes.

It seems like I'm making these two recipes once a week but I know it only happens about once a month so I'm not really complaining.  OK . . I am but mostly because that Ezekiel bread is a gooey dough and I have to use my hands and I hate sticking my hands in gooey stuff.

Tonight we have to drive about an hour for our Azure Standard pickup. It was supposed to happen at 3 p.m. but then it got moved back to 7 p.m. Then we get home and have to at least get it all inside the house. This one was a large order for me. I haven't ordered since January. I told Vince I'm going to try to make three larger orders per year instead of doing it monthly now that we have to drive an hour each way to our pickup. Going forward, I'll probably try to order in March, July and October. I don't like to order in November because we never know when our order is going to be delivered and we could be going to meet the truck the day before or after Thanksgiving and I don't want to do that.  Then December - February there can be snow and ice. When we went for the January pickup, it was 14 degrees, the wind was blowing and I think the "feels like" temp was below zero and there was about 8" of snow in the parking lot where we met the truck and guess who forgot her coat at home! Yep . . it was so cold - never ordering for a winter delivery again.

I'll try to get a picture of our "haul" and share what I got and how I use it if it's anything weird.