My Valentine Gift! (More Bread)

Yesterday the UPS man brought a box from Amazon. Today he came to the porch with my Electrolux Assistent DLX mixer and my Nutrimill grain mill. He is a new guy, regular on our route and said, "Wow, you're the shopping lady!" LOL So in spite of being sick, I did have fun playing today. First I made flour and then I made bread! I was pleased with how everything worked. The flour is definitely finer than what I can make in the Vita-Mix and I only used the medium setting for texture.


Naturally I had to christen my mixer with a batch of beet bread. I will have to write down the changes I made later. Lately there have been some frustrating batches and I realized it was likely because I switched from storebought Spelt flour to home ground, so the measurements were different. My digital scale came earlier this week (same UPS guy! lol) and so I got it out and learned how to use it. The recipe calls for 5.5 cups of flou for the first part, so I multiplied 150 grams (I read on one of my lists that that is the weight of a cup of storebought flour) by 5.5 and used that much flour by weight. Turned out to be 8 cups! WOW! Big difference. I have heard that Spelt is fluffier than other grains when ground. I measured my wheat the same and that seemed to work. This photo is my pink dough at the beginning before all ingredients were added.

The DLX does a great job of mixing, though it did walk and bounce a bit when it got off balance. It does not come with any instructions to speak of, but fortunately, a really kind lady lent me her video from Beth Holland of Bread For Life. Since I am visual when it comes to things like this, it did help to watch this before hand. While the way it works is quite different than a Kitchen Aid, it was really easy to pick up. I was told their might be a learning curve, but I don't think I had any difference in learning how to use it than I would have with any new to me product. The dough produced was noticably better as it was kneaded well. I was afraid that I would spend my Hubby's hard earned $$ and have it not be any better than the Kitchen Aid. Today it earned it's keep though! :o)

Here is the nice stainless steel 8 quart mixing bowl it comes with and the dough is rising. I decided to do a 3 rise bread after watching the video. Usually I do only 2 rises.

Again, I used the scale to see how much the dough weighed as I put it in. I found that my 4x8 pans (measurement may not be exact) take 2# of dough. I had been using 1.5# and getting tiny loaves with these three plus one other small loaf pan. The larger loaf pan, perhaps a 5x9?, took 2# 6.5 oz of dough. You can see they raised nicely.

And here they are out of the oven. These are the nicest looking loaves I have made to date.

I cut this loaf too soon, so this picture shows it mooshed together, but I just couldn't wait!!! It tasted nummy with butter and blackberry jam. This may not be my final recipe for sandwich bread, but at least I feel well on the way to getting what I was looking for and I can't wait to experiment more with my new toys!