Bread!

At our house we eat a lot of bread. A lot. The thing about bread is that it's cheap to make, expensive to buy, and the stuff you buy at the store in plastic bags generally has lots of preservatives and sugars. If you take an alternative route towards buying bread at a local bakery you can plan on a healthier product, but also to spend around $5 a loaf. At our house one of those loaves disappears in a couple of days, so we could easily plan on $15 a week for bread.

The common misconception is that bread is difficult and time consuming to make. It takes me about 15 minutes to make bread dough, which I stick in the fridge overnight, take out when I get up in the morning to finish rising, go to the gym and cook it when I return while I shower and get ready. Voila! I have fresh bread to take to school with me. As a college student this works well with my schedule, but it would be just as easy to make dough in the morning and cook it after work to have fresh with dinner. This is our daily bread recipe, taken from Mark Bitman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian:

2 teaspoons salt
1.5 teaspoon's active dry yeast
3.5 cups of flour (plus some for kneading)
about 1.5 cups of water

Activate your yeast in about a cup of lukewarm water and let it be while you mix your salt with 1.5 cups of flour. Pour in your water/yeast mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until well mixed. Continue adding flour a half cup at a time, and water a Tablespoon at a time until all the flour is added. You should maintain a nice doughy consistency through the whole mixing process--not sticky, but not so dry it falls apart. If it's too sticky add more flour, if it's too dry add more water but be careful, a little water goes a long way. Spread a thin layer of flour on your counter, dump out your dough and knead for about 10 minutes. These ten minutes are where I wind down and put away all my stress from the day before I go to bed. Cover your dough and stick it in the fridge.

In the morning, punch down the dough and let it warm up before you bake it. The dough will take about an hour to warm to room temp in the morning. If I'm in a hurry I turn on the oven to about 100 degrees and set it in the oven to finish rising. When you're ready to bake your bread preheat the oven to 425 (make sure you didn't leave your rising dough in there!). This is the secret to the best crust: fill a cookie sheet with water and set it on the lower rack of the oven to steam the oven. When you knead dough you release gluten, and when gluten reacts with water (steam) the proteins clump together and form a crust (yum!). If you have a pizza stone, stick it in the oven to warm up, if not, oil a cookie sheet and set it aside.

Shape your dough into a ball by rolling the edges under and pinching them together on the bottom of the roll. When the oven is finished heating, make a few slashes on the top of the dough with a sharp knife (this will allow steam to escape while your loaf is breaking so the crust doesn't crack) and put it in the oven for 35-45 minutes. It's done when you can tap on the crust and it sounds hollow. If you like doughy bread tap it on the top, if you like your bread well done all the way through pick it up and tap on the bottom.

Adaptions:

Whole wheat: If you're making an entirely whole wheat loaf, add 2 heaping tablespoons essential gluten, which you can get in bulk at most natural food stores, to get a light, airy bread. Otherwise, limit how much whole wheat flour you use to 1.5 cups or less.

7 grain or oats: substitute up to 1.5 cups of flour for 7 grain flour or oats. A tablespoon of gluten helps in this situation too.