Guest Post: Grandma Erickson's Bread Recipe

This post about bread was sent to me by my childhood friend Sarah. I love that it is a family recipe, that it calls for yeast cake (explanation included), and that the loaves can be referred to as bread without distinction.


the bread before the second rise

the bread baked


The recipe is from my Great-grandma Erickson. The nice thing I noticed about this recipe is that the ingredients are all things that we're suppose to have in our food storage. Also, I have a wheat grinder but no wheat, so I just used regular flour.

Grandma Erickson’s Bread

1 yeast cake

2 cups warm water (110-115 degrees)

3tbsp oil

4-5 cups flour

2 tsp salt

3 tbsp sugar

Dissolve yeast in warm water. Mix with oil. Mix salt, sugar and 2 cups of flour and beat in the water/yeast mixture until smooth. Continue to add flour until you get a moderately stiff dough, knead until smooth. Let rise until double in bulk. Punch down and shape into two loaves and place in greased pans. Let rise until double in bulk. Bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes or until golden. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

As for the yeast cake. What I understand is it's how they measure/divide fresh active yeast. Anyway, it's equivalent to one packet of dry active yeast, which is what I used. I had to call my mom to figure that one out. My bread baking skills are not much, and usually I kill the yeast when I proof it in warm water. I really have to take the temperature of the water to make sure I'm not going to kill it. Now it's going better. Anyway, it's a decent bread recipe if you just want bread without distinction.

Wheat "Bread"

Let's get one thing settled before you launch into this post: I am a bread-making novice. Bread has many non-simple things about it. Yeast. Kneading. Waiting. Rising. Kneading....anything that takes that much work just isn't worth it to me. Hence my unrequited love for cinnamon rolls.

So. I ventured into the world of homemade wheat bread with some trepidation and a lot less of the This-is-a-Fun-Experiment attitude I had with beans. Because I know bread. I have a history with bread. Not a good one. Hence my very limited attempts to make it. (sort of counter intuitive isn't it? I didn't stop playing the violin because I really stunk the first year I played it, now did I?) Also, the Fun-Experiment attitude goes awry when I'm making food that's built into my menu for the day because if the food doesn't turn out, then What Will We Eat???? e.g. when I went against common sense and added a WHOLE tablespoon of paprika to a "Hawaiian pork sauce" this week. As attorneys tell juries ad nauseum, "Don't leave your common sense at the courtroom door.")

Bread.
This is attempt No. 1:


Har har. I know. So. The way you will know this is what your bread will look like is that after 5 hours of "rising" it will look like this:

which is exactly what it looked like when you first mixed the dough.

How I salvaged it:

Add some tomato sauce, cheese, meat, and still more cheese. The pizzas tasted pretty good.


Attempt No. 2:


Yum. Made with molasses. And this time, the lack of height is partly my own fault--I started the bread late in the day and wanted it cooked before I went to bed--and partly how the bread should look (I think).

The recipe I used is from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook 13th Ed.
called Entire Wheat Bread. It made a moist, tasty bread, and my husband (who doesn't approve of wheat bread usually) voted it was a keeper. I froze what we couldn't eat (two loaves of hearty bread is more than we can handle in a week). I loved how healthy the bread is. I think my body was thanking me for eating something nutritious for once.

So, the challenge for this week it to get out there and try a bread recipe--and send me pictures of your results and any recipes that were particularly successful (and if you are into copyrights, let me know if I can legitimately post the recipe I used).

Next post will be about wheat grinders (which are a must if you plan on using the wheat you are storing). AND THEN! We have a guest author about beans. I want the post to look good, so it's taking a little more time than I hoped, but it's coming. Hold your breath. So much goodness coming up!