Let them eat bread, tales of fearless bread making

So those of you that have viewed my profile now know that although I have a variety of interests and passions, one of my most passionate labors of love is feeding my highly allergic son. For all of the anxiety, all-out-terror, hassle of the constant hazard that is this world of cross contaminated manufactured food is for him, there really is true fun in figuring out ways to work food chemistry to get the end result you want (delicious, nutritious food).

And there isn't anything more fun in this arena than playing with yeast. This weekend I invented a new bread. I like to call it "open flour bag grill bread."

I can't really re-create it in specific recipe form, so this is more to inspire the at least mildly yeast experienced to not worry so much and just try stuff.

Here's what I did: I created a starter the day before bread making day with some All Purpose and SAF Red Instant and water (about 1 cup of H2O and AP, 1/2 teaspoon of yeast). I had an open bag of King Arthur Flour Co (KAFC) Organic Whole Wheat, some rice flour, KAFC All Purpose, and Sweet Sorghum flour.

I really couldn't tell you the proportions of each, but maybe something like 3 parts whole wheat to 4 parts All Purpose to 1 part rice flour to 2 parts Sorghum. Added to that a tablespoon or 2 wildflower honey, 1/4 cup sunflower oil, a cup of warm water, a couple shakes of powdered ginger, a shake of allspice, and sea salt. I let it rise just a short while (1 hour?) punched it down and let it rise again.

I let it go longer on this rise (about 2 hours) which is definitely a little strange (usually the first rise is the longest). This is truly the essence of bread making by a busy mom... I really have no time for precision timing, and it turns out the beauty of bread making is that in fact, any bread worth making by me doesn't need to be precision timing!

Then I started heating up the grill. And put my pizza stone for grilled pizza (also purchased at the KAFC site) down. Yes, I said preheat the grill.

I HAD to try the grill for bread making. With high temps of bread making, I keep setting off the fire alarms in my house. Which needless to say really messes up the sleeping habits of the 4 year old and 20 month old. ( And my oven sucks. Overshoots regularly.) But I digress...

So while the grill heated, I cut my dough up into 4 pieces and loosely formed them into 4 loaves. I opened a new Exacto knife to slice the top (don't bother trying to slash with any knife but maybe a brand new Cutco -- any razor will do though. Or you can be seriously pro about it and buy a lame).

The grill heated up to almost 600 F. And since I never did this before it just seemed to reason that when I opened that giant lid on the grill it would drop like 200F instantly. It didn't. And so the bottoms of my lovely open flour bag breads are a little well done. But the upper crust and loaf inside is fantastic.

Hurray for yeast and totally fearless bread making!