The Bread Baker Commeth (Part VI)

In this final episode: Doing the deeds!

Do you want some Dirty Deeds?  Do you want some Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap!? - AC/DC

Although baking bread can be messy, I don't really consider it dirty.  Naturally when I though of the phrase "Doing the Deeds", the AC/DC song came to mind.

From all the recipes included in the Breadman's book, started off with his "Old Fashioned Wheat Bread"  I wanted to compare it so I could compare it to basic loaf of bread I previously posted.  All of his recipes include whole wheat flour!

Since it turned out well, I thought I'd try out some more.

I made a loaf of "English Muffin bread" after work.

Innately I like to have fresh hot/warm sliced bread.  I had several slices of this loaf after it came out of the oven. It tasted and seemed to have the consistency of a normal loaf of bread.  I felt disappointed.  My expectation was that it would be kind of crunchy like the little muffins you buy at the store.

I covered the bread like I always do and went to bed.  The next morning I cut a slice and toasted it.  Holy Moley!  It tasted way better!  It still wasn't enough like the regular English Muffins, but it was really close!  I sliced up the rest of the loaf and it was gone when the rest of the family got up and got ready for school!

With my new found confidence of using the recipes, I expanded out to the Bagel recipe.  I only used the smaller recipe for eight bagels.  Since Ellie and Big Miss like cheese bagels, I put cheese on four of these bagels.

Making bagels is very odd for me.  Why in the world would a person boil bread?  I realized, without boiling the bagels, they wouldn't have their chewy goodness.

Now, a weekend ago, we had all of our nieces and nephews from Ellie's side of the family over night, except for one.  This meant I had six kids running all over my house. (Actually, all the kids are aged 11-15, so not really a bunch of little imps.)

A week or two earlier Ellie and the "Misses" had bought a pre-made pizza crust, and sauce for us to use as a dinner one night.  Instead of using it for ourselves, we used it with all the kids.

Ellie and I realized that single pizza among six kids and two adults really wasn't enough!

Naturally, I thought about the Breadman's recipes, since I had seen a recipe for Pizza Crusts.  I whipped up two crusts, and let them raise.

When it came time to form the pizzas, I knew I had to play Mario the Pizza Maker and toss the dough in the air to stretch them out enough to fit the pizza stones.

There I went, stretching, shaping and tossing the dough.  Boy, were those kids impressed!  I didn't even drop the dough!

Our youngest nephew stayed in the kitchen to help putting the toppings on the pizzas, so we had quite a large number of toppings on them.

The store bought pizza crust - pizza was baked first.  It tasted good, but the crust didn't have any personality, which is my favorite part of the pizza experience.

My homemade crusts were nice and soft, and thanks to whole wheat it had a very nice texture!  All I can say about the pizzas, is... OMG this is good!

To wrap up this final chapter of "The Bread Baker Commeth":

Last night, I made up two dozen bagels.  One dozen were plain, while six were Jalepeno and the other six were cheese.

Yes, they taste very good!

Since I respect the "Breadman", I won't post his recipes here, although, I'm sure you can find them online somewhere.

Happy baking and may the Bread be with you!