Since I begin milling and baking in Dec. '09, I have not had to buy one loaf of bread at the grocery store! Our family of five goes through about 2 loaves per week. It's great for sandwiches, grilled cheese, toast w/ butter or peanut butter, to name a few! I store my bread in the clear bags listed under the Supplies tab and I slice it with a large bread knife as I use it (versus slicing the entire loaf at once). I think it stays much fresher this way.
The question I am most often asked is how long does it take you mill and make your bread? To maximize the nutrients and minerals naturally available to you in the grain, you always want to mill your grains into flour just before using it. Would you believe that in about 5-7 minutes, I'm able to take whole grain wheat and mill it into a flour and place it in a baking pan along with all the ingredients required for a 2 lb. loaf of bread and hit start on the Zoji?!?! That's it! I don't think people believe me when I say how easy it really is until they see me demo it for them. The Zoji does all of the hard work and the entire cycle take about 2.5 hours all while filling my home with the heavenly aroma of fresh baking bread. There is even a timer setting on the Zoji that allows you to delay the start of the cycle so that it finishes a few hours later when you walk in the door.
You can experiment with a variety of grains for your bread and mix different kinds until you find your favorite. You can add nuts, seeds, etc. or just make a basic whole wheat bread. If your family is not used to eating wheat breads, you may want to start with hard white wheat and slowing add in the hard red wheat.
Recipe for Honey Whole Wheat Bread
(adapted from Bread Beckers Recipe Collection)
Place the following in this order in the bread pan (making sure the paddles are in place):
1 1/2 cups hot water
2 tsp. salt
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup honey
1 egg
4 1/2 cups fresh milled flour (I use 2 cups hard red, 1 cup hard white which equals 4 1/2 cups of flour)
2 Tbs. Lecithin
1 tsp. gluten
Make a small well in the middle of the flour and place:
1 Tbs. yeast
The Zoji bread machine has a "homemade" setting which allows you to alter the settings to suit your taste. The instructions for changing your settings are in the back of your owner's manual. You may find that you will have to tinker with your settings some at different times of the year since temperature and moisture can impact the rise of your bread. The 2nd rise is the setting that will likely need to be adjusted, especially if your bread is rising and then falling. You may have to go as low as 18 min. in the hot summer months or as high as 30 in the cold winter months. If your bread isn't rising well, it's probably because you need to increase the 2nd rise or your yeast is bad. To determine if your yeast is active or not, put some honey or sugar in a glass of warm water and add about a tsp. of yeast to it. If it begins frothing at the top after 10-15 min., it is still active, good yeast. If it does nothing, it is not active, so throw it away and buy more. Adding gluten to your recipe will also help with the rise -- you may find adding 2 tsp. helps your rise more.
My Zojirushi Homemade Settings:
Preheat: 18 minutes
Knead: 20 minutes
Rise 1: 45 minutes
Rise 2: 25 minutes
Rise 3: off
Bake: 45 minutes
Keep warm: off
There is a little window on the Zoji that you can peak at while it is going though all of the cycles -- just don't open the machine as tempted as you may be since this will disrupt the temperature and sensitive environment required for the bread to properly rise. When the bread is done baking, the Zoji will beep a few times and it's ready to take out! The baking pan is hot, so using hot pads, tilt the pan towards you and then upward to pull it out. You can leave the bread sitting in the pan for a while, or immediately invert it onto a cooling rack (flipping right back over) to allow to cool. Once it is completely cool, you can put it in the storage bag.
Here is your wheat just before milling it into flour:
After about a minute or so, here is your freshly ground flour (note: your mill has settings to adjust the coarseness of the flour)
Meanwhile, while my grain is milling, I add my liquids to my baking pan in this order (warm water, salt, olive oil, honey and egg)
I then take my freshly milled flour and place 4 1/2 cups directly on top of the liquids (no mixing required). I then add on top of the flour, lecithin, gluten and make a small well for the yeast and voila! My work is done and now it's time to put the pan in the Zoji on my homemade setting and hit start while it works away at making me a beautiful 2 lb. loaf of bread over the next 2 1/2 hours.
And the finished product ready to come out of your Zoji:
And here's a loaf ready to be taken to a friend:
BREAD VARIATIONS:
