Cooking Cheap

What would be a good summer hobby? Particularly if you shouldn’t be typing on the computer. Stay out of the sun, minimal typing. Yes, wine making would be good to it’s too early to harvest grapes. Beer? Brewing was fun but its a whole lot of work to make a whole lot something that might not work and you have to wait. a long time to learn the lesson. I’ve got a wait tolerance (aka feedback horizon) of two days, it better get interesting after two days. Wine takes months, beer takes weeks. Of course, BBQ and bread making! They both take days, but not too many days.

Bread takes one or two days. It’s a butt load of clean up but that helps pass the time of fermenting, rising, and cooking and its gives me something to type about. At the Cooking Cheap HQ, I’ve made enough bread to actually know just enough to not kill myself and the result is usually pretty OK and sometimes it’s very very good.

I happen to have an old Wel-Bilt ™ bread machine and it doesn’t bother me a bit to use it if I think it’s going to be easier. I’ve got an ancient Kenwood (aka Sears) stand mixer. These are labor saving devices and they should be used with appropriate expectations. It’s more usefull to make something good without them, then you will know enough to use them for their intended shortcut. Emril says “baking requires formulas” and that’s mostly true which is why bread machines work at all. It’s also a long way from reality.

Flour and yeast fits the “cheap” part of our theme. Now to make if “Eats”. Really good bread, is not easy unless you live in a third world country with brick lined wood fired ovens and use a starter that goes back for thousands of years or you live next to a craft bakery that charges %3.50 a loaf that goes bad half a day later. Then, you might think about making your own. That’s actually the nature of the bread and not the baker(y) misdeed.. What if we could turn out almost as good a loaf for whole lot less that. It’ll still go bad if you don’t learn how to freeze it and reheat it

I like my neighborhood bakery and they deserve every penny they can squeeze out of the upwardly mobile, but if you have some time and a need for “Cheap Eats”. Let’s bake some bread. I’m not going to worry about publishing someone else’s recipe and copyrights. I’ll give credit if I find it, but there’s only so many ways to combine flour, water, rising agent and seasonings. With that few ingredients, its not a formula that separates the good loaf from the serviceable, it is skill and the mysterious “feel” and the “feel” is easier to learn than you think. Right now at this very moment, millions, maybe billions of bakers are making bread. This seems like something we could learn. So make that millions plus me and you..

If you just happen onto this post and you know how to make bread then you should find someone to help them in baking. I don’t know about the thousand fishes miracle but everyone can learn to bake bread. Learning to fish is not that hard either but I don’t care for fish.

Remember, it’s Cooking Cheap. It’s not about the best you can buy, it’s about what you can do with what you have or can barely afford. Just like your grandmother did. My grandmothers didn’t teach me to cook. Mom tries to help me but I don’t remember what she shows me– perhaps I just can’t be taught.. Then again I might be able to figure it out if I do it enough.

Part Two of the Introduction is about equipment and ingredieants. You need them. Fortunately neither of us is good enough yet to get all “organic”. But we do need to pay attention to detals. I want sourdough bread and you need a “starter” and that takes 2 to 6 days. I’ll make that first and then get to talking about what I know about ingredients and equipment.