Easiest homemade bread

It's time for my bread recipe. Super basic, easily tweekable, and so far it's been fool-proof.

Here is my (in)famous basic loaf bread.

You’ll need a stand mixer with dough hooks, or a hand mixer..preferably with dough hooks. If you don’t have one with dough hooks, you can do part of it with the normal whisk attachment, and then the last part with a spoon.

3 cups flour
1 1/4 cups of warm water
1 pkg. or 2 1/4 teaspoons yeast
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons oil
1 teaspoon salt

Dissolve yeast in the water, with the oil, sugar. Let it sit for a few minutes or until a little foamy, then add your salt. Right here is where you could add in other flavorings to the bread. Dried or fresh herbs, garlic powder, ect.

Mix in 2 cups of flour on low. If you are using dough hooks, do 2 1/4 cups. Mix for 4 minutes. Increase speed to medium, for 3 minutes. If your mixer can handle it, mix in the remaining flour with the mixer (if using dough hooks, you will have no problem at all). If just using the normal beaters..take away the mixer, and mix in the rest by hand with a spoon.

Let rise for about an hour. Stir the dough down (approx 25 strokes). Spread batter/dough into a 9x5 bread pan (greased). Allow it to rise for about 30 minutes, 40 in the winter, the pop into a preheated oven at 375 F for 40-50 minutes.

For those with stand mixers. The only work for you is measuring stuff out.

For those with a hand mixer with dough hooks. Super easy.

Anyone else..you can still make it..it just takes a little more muscle.

NOW, to break it down a little. You can use any flour with this recipe. I personally like two cups of whole wheat and one cup of standard bread flour (unbleached). You can do all unbleached bread or all purpose flour, or all whole wheat (red or white whole wheat). You can pretty much use whatever. Depending on the flours, you may need to add a little more water or oil. It should be more like batter than hand kneaded dough..but not watery like a cake batter.

I use coconut, or olive oil. Please use expeller pressed oils ONLY (for every day eating). If it’s not expeller presed, than it’s chemically extracted, and that’s all sorts of not good.

Use unrefined sugar, please. Or, 3 tbsp of honey, agave, or maple syrup, instead of 2 of cane sugar. I actually prefer it with honey as it stays fresher for longer.

Homemade Dog Food

Since I made my just about monthly batch of dog food today, I've decided to post the recipe. It's not set in stone and you can change it up a bit, so long as you do not ever use garlic and onion in it.

3lbs lean ground beef (1.99/2.99 per pound)
1lb dry pearled barley (1.99)
2lbs carrots (2.49)
2lbs potatoes (approx 1.oo)
vegetable stock, enough to cover the ingredients throughout cooking (varies, sometimes I just use homemade)
1/4 soy sauce (approx .50)
1/2 head of celery (.75)

I use the biggest stock pot I own, which by stock pot standards it's not the largest out there. Carrots, potatoes and celery get chopped up thinly and tossed into the pot. Next all of the beef and soy sauce. Then I put it on the stove and fill to 1 inch below the rim with stock, probably about 12 cups worth. I let it simmer for an hour after it comes to a boil, then when that's up, I dump in the barley and simmer for another 90 minutes.

This then gets separated into 270g portions and frozen. I use ziptop lunch bags, flattened out so they can be stacked easily. This batch lasts my dog (half lab, half american bulldog) about 20 days or so, and she's a big eater. It gets mixed into Purina's Beneful dry food, with a half cup of stock per night.

Pia loves it so much, that she literally licks her bowl clean and will carry it out to the living room in attempts to guilt me into feeding her more, but she's just a glutton.

The recipe is kind of basic, and you can swap brown rice for the barley, any lean meat for the beef, and other veggies for the carrots, but mine loves carrots so I haven't tried anything else.

Pia, the pain.

Pia, the beloved mutt, won't stop eating twigs. The end result? She's having poop issues. On my carpet. That I just shampooed. So, instead of working more rows of my Storm Cloud Shawlette, I'll be logging off to clean.

She's half lab, and really, I should have known better. The only other lab I've had ate half of a picnic bench, and that was entirely my parent's fault for leaving her unattended with it. Unfortunately for us, she won't outgrow the Labs Will Eat Everything stage. At least she hasn't behaved this way at other people's houses. Just like the toddler, she saves all of the bad behavior for home.