Choosing Voluntary Simplicity » Bread Making

By Request — My Oatmeal Bread Recipe

Shirley — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:01:38 +0000

Several people have written to ask for the oatmeal bread recipe I mentioned in some of my breadmaking posts. I have been making this bread for a long time and it is one of our favorites. I would guess that this recipe originally came from the back of a bag of Quaker Oats... although I am not sure. The recipe as it was given to me is simply a list of the ingredients... there are no instructions given... but here is how I make this bread.

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Tips for Baking Better Bread at Higher Altitudes

Shirley — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:09:43 +0000

Reader question... "We recently moved to a location that has a higher altitude and all of a sudden I can't make a good loaf of bread any more even though I'm still using the same recipe I always use. What happens is the bread rises well but falls while it is baking and ends out as a very dense and low loaf. I'm fairly certain that the higher altitude is the problem but I don't know how to fix it. Do you have any ideas about what I can do to make good bread again?" --Karen H.

Making Teddy Bear Rolls With Your Kids

Shirley — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:10:47 +0000

If your kids like to help you cook, they will love making these teddy bear rolls. Any yeast dough works great for making bears. With a sweet roll dough, try decorating the bears with pieces of raisins for eyes and a ribbon made out of icing. Or use your regular bread dough and make bears without any decoration at all.

When Homemade Bread Tastes Too Yeasty

Shirley — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:41:33 +0000

Reader question: "I'm not having very good results with making my own bread. It tastes too yeasty and has almost a sour flavor. The texture is also very coarse with big holes. Do you have any ideas about what I might be doing wrong?" --Jenni W.

How I Make Hamburger & Hot Dog Buns

Shirley — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:14:56 +0000

One of the most difficult things about living with a food allergy (aside from the allergic reactions themselves) is not being able to eat a lot of the foods that other people take for granted. For example, what about a cookout, where everybody is eating grilled hot dogs and hamburgers. If you're lucky enough to have found hot dogs without added soy, what happens when... because of the soy allergy... you can't eat the hot dog bun? A hot dog or a hamburger eaten alone or on a slice of bread just doesn't seem like cookout food.

A Broken Bread Machine And A Bad Recipe Day

Shirley — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:51:57 +0000

I really, really don't like my bread machine. It does a wonderful job of kneading, but it bakes a terrible loaf of bread. That's partly why for the last two or three months I have been making three loaves of oatmeal bread every other day, kneading the dough by hand because the volume is way too much for the bread machine, and baking the three loaves in the oven. I freeze the extra two loaves. I really prefer to make bread by hand, and the bread is better too, but this past Saturday was especially busy and we had a lot going on, so I decided to save a few minutes by letting the bread machine knead one loaf of whole wheat bread. I loaded up the machine with the ingredients, turned it on, and more or less forgot about it... until a few minutes later when I noticed that the bread machine was making peculiar noises and that none of the ingredients had been mixed. When I dumped the flour mixture into a bowl, I could see that the metal mixing paddle had snapped into two pieces. I finished up the bread by hand.