Monday - French Bread

My Back of the Pantry entry for today is Gourmet Bread Base from Jakubowski Farms. This is another item I have had in my pantry for about 10 years. I bought 3 tubs ( 2lbs each) of this in Wisconsin and moved it to Utah with me. I have been in Utah for 7 years, so I am fairly sure this is about 10 years old.

I make a lot of homemade bread in my bread machine and I just ran out of bread flour. Instead of buying more flour, when I already have a bunch of All-purpose and Whole Wheat, I decided it was time to use up the Bread Base. It contains powdered milk, sugar, lecithin, salt and nutritional supplements. I bought it to use in my original bread machine but it only calls for 3 tablespoons of bread base per loaf. This is obviously why I have 2 containers still in the back of my pantry.

Bread flour has more gluten than All-purpose flour and therefore creates a stronger infrastructure to hold the air that yeast produces. The bread base adds gluten to All-purpose flour to increase the lift.

I use the bread machine recipe for french bread and then add about 1/4 cup of bread base for two loaves of bread. Yes, two loaves. I don't like the shape of bread machine loaves, especially the little belly button on the bottom, so I just use my bread machine to do the mixing and the rising. Just before the final rise, I take the bread out of the machine. I kneed the bread, let it go through its final rise in bread pans and then cook it in the oven.

I have to let my bread rise for 30 minutes in the bread pans, then cook in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. This makes great looking loaves and I didn't have to do anything but measure the ingredients and set a few timers.