Little Red Hen

I finally attempted to make bread! I've been putting it off with the excuse that I dont have a big electric mixer of some sort, not to mention that I left my bread pans in storage in AZ. I recently purchased a hand wheat grinder so that I could actually use my wheat. Here's our story of
"The Little Red Hen".

Sunday morning I decided to make bread for my family. Dayson was so excited to use the wheat grinder and I was more than happy to let him help! I had to take a break after about 3 cups, so Dayson dove in. He did pretty good. Between him and James, they ground about 5 cups. My muscles might be a tad bigger next time you see me.

It took about 30 min to get the 12 cups necessary to bake bread. (that wasn't including the breaks I had to take. Not bad, right? I wanted to try the recipe Kristine posted a few months ago, but realized that I didn't have evaporated milk. So I did another recipe that I had made before using someones Bosch. I bought some Vital Wheat Gluten, but forgot to put it in! Oops. The mixing wasn't bad, just sticky. It took more flour than I ground up, good thing I had whole wheat flour from the store on hand. I got it all mixed in, where it actually looked like dough! The yeast even foamed this time! I was feeling pretty Betty Crocker! I got the dough into loaves and into the pans (I checked at Walmart and they were $4 each, the dollar store had them for $1 each, sometimes I can really score there.) I dont know if this is a great idea or not, but I put the pans on the hood of my car outside to rise. When I went to put them in the oven I had to rearrange things to get them all in there. I forget how small the kitchen is until I get into the middle of something. Easter dinner was chaotic, but turned out nicely. Anyway, the bread:

was delicious. We ate almost a whole loaf as soon as it was done. Luckily I had canned some strawberry jam a few weeks back. It went perfectly with it. I now have the confidence to bake bread without a Bosch! Oh, and my family members helped me make it and eat it, unlike the other Little Red Hen!