The Tale of Two Loaves

As much as the Interwebs have been my saving grace both in researching Audrey's medical conditions and in finding recipes, I am convinced that some people randomly throw together some ingredients and then post them along with false photos. Then they sit back, hands behind their heads, staring at the computer screen. And they laugh a maniacal laugh - mwahahahahahah - as they imagine the money spent on their faux recipe, the time wasted, the huge stack of dishes. Of this I am convinced.

One of Audrey's favorite lunchtime meals is sandwiches. I have successfully made a pretty tasty gluten-free loaf; however, it contains sorghum flour, tapioca starch, potato starch, and yeast...all ingredients she shouldn't have. So imagine my delight when I found an ebook with a recipe for sandwich bread. And according to the recipe, my resulting sandwich bread would look like this:

Looks like normal bread, right? And not just normal but delicious, right? The ingredients - eggs, butter, salt, coconut flour...well, it occurred to me that for those ingredients to make bread, it would probably take a miracle. Or perhaps some act of science I am yet unaware of since I haven't been baking this way for longer than three days. But I thought maybe the eggs would make it puff up. Or maybe there is some type of natural leavening property to coconut flour. 

I decided to give it a try. 

Now tell me, does this look like the photo above?

I'm no Rachel Ray, but COME ON! I'm not so incompetent in the kitchen that I would screw it up this badly. Honestly, when it came out of the oven, I thought, No biggie. This may not work for a sandwich, but we can enjoy this as a snack this afternoon. Um, no. It is the driest "bread" I've ever had in my life. It went in the trash. Yep, 6 eggs, expensive grass-fed butter, and equally expensive coconut flour...in. the. trash. 

I was still determined to feed my little girl sandwiches for lunch, so I did what I should  have done in the first place: I googled "whole new mom sandwich bread". Whole New Mom is my go-to gal for most things, including homemade skincare products and now Candida-friendly recipes.

Through my search, I found the following recipe: 

Grain-free Sandwich Bread

1 c. cashew butter (or almond butter)

4 large eggs, separated

1/2 - 2 T. honey

2 1/2 t. apple cider vinegar

1/4 c. almond milk

1/4 c. coconut flour

1 t. baking soda

1/2 t. salt

1. Preheat oven to 300. Place a small dish of water on the bottom rack. Prepare a greased 8.5x4.5 bread pan.

2. In a mixer, beat the nut butter and egg yolks.

3. Add honey, vinegar, and milk to butter and egg mixture and mix.

4. Combine coconut flour, baking soda, and salt in a separate bowl.

5. With a hand mixer, beat egg whites until peaks form.

6. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix thoroughly.

7. Add egg whites to mixture and mix until combined but be careful not to overmix.

8. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 40 minutes. Do not open oven until 40 minutes have passed. 9. Loaf is done when toothpick inserted in the middle is clean.

10. Allow to cool 20 minutes before removing from pan. Then allow to cool an hour before cutting.

(Original author: Danielle Walker from Against All Grain)

And...drumroll...this bread turned out much more like bread. Different but bread.

The main difference in this bread from "normal" sandwich bread is the texture. The texture is more like a quick bread (think banana bread). However, I think if we had had more time on our side and let it sit like she recommends, it would have been more like sandwich bread. Also, next time I will completely omit the honey because, for one, my baby doesn't need honey, and for another, the sweetness added to the texture to be reminiscent of a quick bread.

A couple of notes:
**Nut Butter - the recipe called for cashew butter. Peanuts are a no-no on a Candida diet. Something about peanuts molding easily. Or something. Anyway, I knew I had some cashews in the pantry that I could make into cashew butter myself. But they had clearly been neglected for awhile, and ew! I think I know what moldy nuts are now. Not like the green mold you see on bread, but they were a little bit furry. Yuck! I already had some almond butter in the fridge and had to make a bit more to equal a cup.

Making your own nut butter is so easy! You just put the nuts in your food processor and let it go until the nuts turn to butter. Almonds take awhile longer than peanuts...usually about 15 or 20 minutes. And you may need to turn your food processor off mid-process because the food processor tends to get really hot, and you don't want it to burn out!

**Coconut Flour - coconut flour and almond flour both are very expensive! So far, I have been spending a small fortune buying Bob's Red Mill brand at the grocery store; however, Honeyville Grains carries both items in bulk and for a much more reasonable price. PLUS they only charge $4.49 for shipping! I have ordered wheat from them many times. I think they are currently out of stock on the coconut flour, but hopefully they will get more soon.

Anyway, Audrey and I both enjoyed our sandwiches on our Second Attempt Bread...

...and we enjoyed the bread - topped with some unsweetened cinnamon butter - again for a snack in the afternoon!

You can't live on bread alone, but some sure is nice.

(Note: This post is all about wheat and breadmaking. If you don't mill your own wheat, no worries. You can still follow the recipe and just use whole wheat flour from the store. I recommend King Arthur's. But do still read about milling your own.)

I have a lot of friends who mill their own wheat and make bread. A couple of years ago, I just didn't get it. "They sell bread at the grocery store, you know," I would say to them. They would tell me about the many health benefits of milling your own wheat, but I ignored the growing desire to follow them into the world of Make-Your-Own-Bread. Quite honestly, I was more intimidated than skeptical. (I would go into the health benefits of using the freshly milled WHOLE grain vs. what flour manufacturers do, but it is so lengthy. Google it.)

Finally, I decided to make my own bread. But I would do it my way. I still didn't fully understand what processes a bag of store flour goes through, so I decided I would just use the whole wheat flour from the store. And I bought a breadmaker.

I was so excited. I was going to do this. But I had found a short cut. The breadmaker did make things easy. About 10 minutes to throw the ingredients in, and then it did the rest. And the house filled with a wonderful bread-baking smell. And when it came out, though it was an odd square shape, it did look good. "Fresh bread!" I called to the kids. They came running...and devoured the whole loaf in 10 seconds flat.

Yeah. 1 loaf of bread for a family of 6. Not brilliant. I must note, though, that I hang on to my breadmaker for one single use on one single special night of the year: on Christmas Eve the bread machine makes perfect dough for my Clone of a Cinnabon recipe which makes a DELICIOUS addition to Christmas morning breakfast. I'm not so sure I can healthify those yummy rolls; however, I do have 85 days to figure it out. I'll consider that my challenge.

Anyway, we were visiting some dear friends in MO, and Kim is a wheat grinder, bread maker (don't you love the titles I so lovingly bestow upon people?). While we were there, she made bread for us, and I was able to not only taste how delicious WHOLE bread is, but also observe how very easy it is!

So then I had to decide - with my husband's help and wisdom - if we wanted to do this or not. It is about a $600 initial investment, but when you look at it as an investment in your health...well, I had my husband sold on that part. What he was skeptical about was if I would purchase all this stuff and then add it to my Shelf of Unused Appliances after a week or two. (It's not like he didn't have a good argument. Exhibit A: The Bread Machine (though I had to argue that the Christmas Cinnabon Rolls totally make that worth it)). But in the end, we decided to take the plunge, and I'm happy to say that my mill and mixer get much more than just a once-a-year workout.

Anyway, this is the equipment I use:


On the left is my Wondermill, and on the right is my Bosch mixer, which can mix enough dough to make like 10 loaves of bread. I only make 6 at a time, so I don't exactly remember its capacity, but it's adequate for our family. I got all of my start-up equipment and bulk ingredients like yeast and dough enhancer from Urban Homemaker.

Then of course you need the wheat. Hard red will give you that very unique "whole wheat" taste. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I only use hard red for bread. I use hard white for everything else. (Again, if you are not ready to take the plunge into the fun world of wheat and milling, use King Arthur's whole wheat flour.) You can also get soft white which is recommended for cookies and cakes. I had some for awhile, but I really didn't notice a difference between the two, and I found the soft wheat harder to work with because it didn't always measure 1:1. Perhaps if I was doing pastries, I would opt for the soft wheat. I keep my bulk hard red and hard white in big buckets like this that will store grain forever!




I used to always get my grain at Bread Beckers. That's because they are located in GA. Even to ship a 50lb. bucket of wheat to my home an hour away in GA was only $14. To CT? Shipping is about $47! It looked like my wheat milling, bread making days were over because I could find NOTHING like Bread Beckers up here. THEN I found Honeyville Grain. They ship for a flat $4.49. Yes, that's four dollars and forty-nine cents! So I recently got a 50lb. bag of hard white wheat shipped to me from California for $4.49!

So anyway, let's get on with making the bread. This is such an easy recipe. I
heard got it from my MO friend who heard got it from a friend who...(I'm hearing REO Speedwagon right now for some reason). It's actually Marilyn Moll's recipe (from Urban Homemaker).

Mill enough wheat berries to get 10-12 c. flour

Warm together:
6 c. water (or 5 c. water + 1 c. plain yogurt)
2 c. of the flour
3 T. yeast
Sponge mixture for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat together 2/3 c. honey and 2/3 c. oil

Mix together:
remaining flour
1 1/2 T. salt
3 T. dough enhancer (lecithin)
1/4-1/2 c. wheat gluten (optional)

Add honey mixture to yeast mixture and stir; while mixing, gradually add flour mixture.

Knead in mixer for 8 minutes. Turn out on to oiled surface and dividein to 6 loaves. Place in oiled pans and let rise 30 minutes. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

So I start by milling my wheat. I don't know how it works, but you get more flour than you use wheat (ex: 1 cup of wheat berries generally yields about 1 1/4 c. flour). I know there's an explanation for this, but it probably involves math, so I'll leave it alone.


Anyway, in GA I had to only use 8 cups of wheat berries to get the right dough consistency. Up here for some reason, I have to use 9 (everything costs more here, so that must be why). So I mill 9 cups of wheat berries.

Then I put 5 cups of the hottest tap water possible into my bowl. I then add 1 cup of yogurt. The cold of the yogurt makes the hot water cool to lukewarm which is perfect for yeast. Add the flour and yeast and pour into your mixer.

Then you have 15 minutes to do whatever you want to. My 15 minutes included administering a grammar test to 2 wiggly boys. And cleaning up my mess so far (I am obnoxiously meticulous about cleaning as I go - ask my husband. I make him so mad because he'll call us for dinner, and I'll immediately clean up the mess before sitting down for dinner; I just can't enjoy a meal with a messy kitchen). And preparing for the next step: I put the lecithin and salt in the remaining flour. I also grind up some flax seed which I also add to the flour. Finally, I combine and then heat up the honey and oil for about 45 minutes in the microwave. This blends it better and adds a little more heat for that yeast.

When my 15 is up, I start the mixer, swirl the oil/honey in, and then start adding flour. This is very important. The mistake many people make with bread is making the dough too stiff. You don't want a consistency like pizza dough. You want a soft dough. The way you know it is right is when the dough just begins to pull off the side of the mixer NOT when it is cleanly swept off the sides like with pizza dough.


So get the right amount of flour and then run the mixer for another 8 minutes to knead the dough. Then - and here's a great trick I learned from my MO friend - you know how usually when you throw some dough on the counter you sprinkle some flour down first so the dough won't stick? Well, that flour always ends up drying out your dough. So instead, spread some oil over your countertop. Get lots on your fingers and hands too so YOU won't stick to the dough!


OK, so at this point occasionally I will use a scale to get uniform loaves but usually I do not have the time to give in to such compulsions, so I just eyeball it. I cut it into 6 "equal" pieces and form loaves with 5 of them. With the 6th one, I spread it out, sprinkle a Sucanat/cinnamon mixture on it, roll it up, form it into a loaf, and plop it into a pan.

Oh, and my pans - I got them from Urban Homemaker too. They are on the smaller side (8" maybe vs. 10"??), so I get 6 loaves. If you use larger pans, you might only get 5 loaves.

Then the loaves rise for 30 minutes (time to do school with the littles one, clean up, start this post).


Then in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes. And done!


Once they're all cooled off, into my professional bread bags - you can buy them by the 100 from Bread Beckers or Urban Homemaker (or you could just save some from the store bought bread you used to buy).

That's it! It really is an easy process, especially once you've done it a couple times. I mean, I taught my kids some school and cleaned my kitchen and baked bread all in an hour and half!