I am constantly trying to find and improve my arsenal of cheap healthy recipes. A good places to start is at the basics.

If you can get really good at creating very frugal yet tasty basics then you are very well set to live a frugal life.

So where better to start than Bread?…..

I already posted about my quick flat bread, which is great by the way, but this loaf bread recipe is now pretty well refined and is replacing our purchasing of loafs from the supermarket.

The cost for a decent loaf of bread here is about $2.90, I estimate that these loafs cost less than $1 to make 2 and are probably much healthier.

This recipe started life as a basic white loaf with too much sugar, but I refined it into a wholemeal loaf and added raisins to give it more taste and keep the sugar content lower.

Ingredients (for 2 loafs):

7 cups of wholemeal flour
1 cup of milk (I use 2%)
2 tbsp sugar (I use brown sugar
2 tbsp instant yeast
1 tbsp salt
2.5 tbsp oil (olive is nice)
A little shortening or oil for greasing the pans (I use all vegetable shortening for this)
Warm Water

Let’s get baking!

Firstly measure a cup of warm water (baby bottle warm)
Add 1 tbsp of sugar, then mix in 2 tbsp of yeast and mis well…. leave this to do it’s scientific reaction bit for 5 or so minutes:

You will know the yeast is active (which it needs to be) as it will form a thick foam on the surface.

… Now, get a large mixing bowl and pour in the yeast mixture. Add:
3 cups of flour,
1 tbsp salt,
1 tbsp sugar,
1 cup of milk,
2 tbsp oil.

Get a spoon and mix it all up… I saw a good recomendation to mix it 50 times in each direction. You should end up with a cake batter like mixture as you can see in the picture below.

(ignore the yeast mixture on the left… that was for another batch!!)

Add another 4 cups of flour and mix until the mixture is a little more solid and coming away from the edge of the bowl. I add the 1 cup of raisins at this point but they can be added earlier if you like.

Now turn the mixture out onto a surface, let it sit for 15 minutes, then knead for 10-20 minutes until the dough creates an elastic and nice feeling ball. If you need help with kneading, see this video Knead Dough.

During the kneading I make sure I fold and push all the raisins fairly evenly through the bread.

It should look something like this!

Most of the hard work is done, but some waiting remains.

Get the dough and put it into a large oiled or greased bowl (I put about 1/2 tbsp oil on a little piece of kitchen tissue and wipe the bowl all around)

Put a damp tea towl over the service and leave it in a warm place (on top of the fridge is good) to rise for about an hour. The dough should roughly double in size.

Now punch the dough down, show it how angry you are that it’s making you wait :).

Recover and wait for another 45 mins to an hour, until the dough has risen back up to where it was before.

Take the dough, put it onto a very lightly floured surface, split into two equal pieces and let it sit for another 10 minutes.

Get your two loaf pans and grease them with a little shortening or oil. Take each piece of dough and flatten into a large rectangle, bigger than the overall size of the pan.

Fold the two ends in, then the sides to make it a little smaller than the pan itself, roll it around a little to seal the ends and then place it into the pan.

Now let this rise again for another 30minutes to an hour.

….Meanwhile heat the oven to about 425 degrees.

Once risen (the bread should be touching the sides and filling the pan a lot more), places the loafs into the oven for 25-30minutes, tap the loafs to make sure they sounds hollow. If not they may need a few minutes longer.

Turn the loafs onto a wire rack to cool for about 20 minutes (not before). They yummy wholemeal raisin bread is then…. finally…. ready to eat.

(The flash made these loafs look a little burnt… but trust me, they were perfect)

It may seem like a lot of work but the actual time involved working is pretty minimal and can easily be done whilst doing other things, blogging in my case!

I use mine in substitute for normal bread. It makes great French toast!

Bon Apetite!

My favorite, cheese, mustard and spinach sandwich.

Original Post by FrugalZeitgeist.com.

Modified from the recipe for Basic Bread by JustPeace.org.

Tags: basic bread recipe, cheap and easy recipes, cheap staple recipes, easy wholemeal bread, healthy homemade bread, very frugal recipes

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 10:17 pm and is filed under Recipes & Food, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.