A Pain in the … and Bread making in Five Minutes?

Funny pains. Ghost pains? They happen to all of us right?  Those are the pains that come on while doing some activity, hang around for sometimes hours, maybe even a day, then mysteriously disappear.  One of those pains happened to me this week.

Tuesday, while doing my marathon pace run, something pinged-popped-zinged-zapped my lower butt cheek area.  It was weird but then went from being weird to down right painful.  After finishing my MP run on the mill, I took Shane outside to finish up for just under 4 miles and   it     was      HURTING!  I thought “WOW! No race for me this Saturday!”.  Wednesday was a day off running due to the pain. But by Wednesday night, the pain  was gone.  Thursday I pounded out a good, yet easy 12 miles.  It had to be simply a muscle spasm because, really, what disappears just as quickly as it comes on like that?!  Just goes to prove, you shouldn’t give up the ship at the first sign of a storm.   Give it a day and it just might blow over (What an analogy! How clever am I??? ).

Thursday night was swim night. You know how I just L EE OOO VVV E  swimming?!  UGG!  My wet suit never arrived so I swam cold again.  Grin and bear it. The best part is the feeling of accomplishment after an hours worth of water time.  Can’t beat that.

Make the Bread… In FIVE (5) Minutes!

My sister-in-law and family gave me a wonderful book at Christmas called “Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day”.

The recipes introduce you to a method of baking bread that is quick and simple and produces top notch home baked bread. My first experience: The Master Recipe

We start by mixing the dough in bulk so you can make up to 4 1lb loaves as you need them. It’s no problem to make up the dough and let it sit in your fridge for up to 14 days, taking out 1 lb measured loaves as you are ready to bake.

The Master Wheat Bread

· 5 ½ cups Whole Wheat Flour

· 2 cups All Purpose Flour

· 1 ½ TBS yeast

· 1 TBS kosher salt

· ¼ cup Vital Wheat Gluten

· 4 cups Luke Warm Water (about 100 deg.F)

1. Measure the dry ingredients and whisk the flours, yeast, salt, gluten in a bowl. *You could stop here, seal the bowl and continue on when you are ready to form a dough.

2. Mix the water into the dry ingredients – No Kneading Necessary. Add all at once to the dry ingredients and mix with a spoon , a food processor – with a dough attachment, or heavy duty mixer with a paddle attachment. The dough will rise complete in about 2 hours.

3. Allowing the dough to rise requires you to cover it with a loose lid or loosely with plastic wrap. It will rise in 2 hours or you can let it rise overnight. It won’t harm the dough. You may want to divide it into individual loaves, 1 lb x 4 or 2 lb x 2, wrap each separately and continue on as needed or as you want to experiment with different flavoring.

4. Ready to bake: Shape the loaf by dusting a surface with flour. Shape the dough in your hands (you may want to dust your hands with flour). Note: The flour is not meant to be incorporated into the dough just simply prevents sticking. Shape into the desired shape for no more than 40 seconds otherwise the loaf may become dense.

5. Let it rest, loosely covered in plastic wrap for about 90 minutes (if its cold dough) or 40 minutes if it’s fresh and unrefrigerated.

A Variety of Bread:

1. The first 1 lb of dough,   I simply shaped into small rolls. About 8 rolls and baked for 20 minutes.   A little plain but worked great to serve with the sausage patties Ted enjoyed so much.  They were also perfect dipping rolls for homemade sweet potato soup!

2. The second loaf, I added 1/3 cup grated cheese and rolled it up into the loaf. Brushed with olive oil and topped with Seaweed Gomasio (Seaweed, Sesame seeds and Sea Salt). Let rest for one hour.  Preheat oven to 350F and bake for 35 minutes.

3. The third load had a mishap. It dropped onto the floor as I was working with the FOURTH dough ball. That may not have been a bad thing but we have a dog. A very HAIRY German Shepherd dog. Unfortunately, vacuuming had not been my top priority on this particular day….get the picture???  No picture.

4. The fourth loaf became a Peanut Butter Banana Loaf. Preheat oven to 350 F. Spray a large loaf pan with non-stick spray.  *This was the best loaf. Maybe because I love PB and Bananas.

Mix one very over ripe banana with 2 to 3 TBS of peanut butter. Roll out the dough to the length of a loaf pan. Spread the banana mixture on top. Roll up lengthwise. Let sit in the loaf pan for 4 hours. Bake for 35 minutes.

Three healthy varieties of bread. 

There are so many more recipes I’m dying to try out of this book. Stay tuned!

And…..YOUR favorite bread IS???? Please tell!