Leaven Life

For about 10 years now I've been baking bread. Some years have seen more loaves than others. A professor of mine at Huntington College was the first person to show me how it's done. He taught me how to make dough and knead it by hand, and that's the way I've been doing it ever since.

I'd like to really get back into baking, so I thought I should do some regular posts on the subject. Fresh bread is one of my favorite foods. The smell fills the whole house, the rustic loaves look like a frickin still life by Chardin, and the taste makes you want to smack your mother.

Here's the loaf I've been making for about a year now. It's a whole wheat boule made with a brotform. This is the loaf I'll be writing about in the next few Leaven Life posts, and I'll get into brotforms and yeast and kneading and all that in the future. Right now I'll just list the ingredients (some of the amounts aren't included because there are two ways I make this--with bakers yeast and with wild yeast):

yeast

whole milk

1/2c oats

1tsp salt

1/8c oil

1/8c brown sugar

1 egg

1/4c wheat germ

wheat flour

bread flour

Oh, and as a p s, I'm not writing this as a master baker or anything. Please point out if I'm doing something stupid or if you have a tip that'll help me out or if I've done a sucky job of explaining something.