Elisa’s Day

the path to homemade bread is a long and somewhat convoluted one, i think that’s probably pretty common. it started with a bread maker, and then we moved on to hand making each loaf when the urge struck us but still buying most of our bread, then we made the decision to only eat homemade bread, and then we were thrilled to find a recipe that made 3 whole loaves a time, which for a time was great. then the kids got bigger and more lunches needed to be packed and soon i find myself making bread a couple times a week. and to that i say yeeeccchh.

so i turned to grandma, who had 5 kids and made her own bread. and as usual grandma’s “recipe” is sketchy at best. she basically started throwing out vague measurements and “i think” amounts.

“it’s just bread” she says.

“it’s yeast, with sugar and a liquid and a fat and flour” she says.

and she’s right. and so i decided to tackle it grandma style. with some yeast and some sugar and some fat ( oil for me ) and some liquid ( water ) and then keep adding flour until it feels right. it’s hard to keep exact count of flour, but i’d say it was approx. 21 cups of flour. and that gave us 6 loaves of bread and two batches of rolls. that should last us a week, or just slightly more.

since it was asked for, i’ll post the kool aid recipe

2 cups all purpose flour
2 pkg kool aid  
1/2 cup of salt 
1 tsp cream of tartar 
2 cups boiling water 
3 tbsp oil

mix dry ingredients, add boiling water and oil and stir until well mixed. turn out onto a floured counter and knead until dough is a consistent texture. you may need to add small amounts of flour to reach desired softness. store in airtight container.

the cool thing about mixing it this way, is that the dry ingredients look completely white, but at soon as you pour the water it, it’s like it magically turns a bright colour

since i’m at it, here is my other, non-kool aid recipe, which also worked great, just doesn’t smell as nice !

2 1/2 cups of flour
1/2 cup of salt
2 teaspoons of cream of tartar or alum
2 cups boiling water
2 – 3 tablespoons of oil

food colouring for colour

combine the ingredients, stir well. Knead the dough. Store in an airtight container