Friday Post - Pouring - a bread recipe

I took a Montessori preschool book out of the library a while back just to get a bit of a checklist of things that I should be working on, seeing as I'm not sending my children to real preschool.  One of the activities on the list that we haven't been doing is pouring.  They say I should start with large beads, work towards beans, grains, and finally water.

I started with beads and they just ended up being carried around the house.  I gave up.

A few weeks later, I decided instead to get my daughter to help me make bread.  It worked out really well; she was riveted.  The thrill of standing on the stepping stool and being at counter height!  The the look of pride as she holds measuring spoons and dips their contents into the pan!  The squeals of delight as the bread comes out of the machine!

Yes, we have a bread machine.  It's been so completely vital to our routine, that I don't know how we'd function without one.  Oh, wait, I do know; we'd be paying $5+ per loaf of bread.

We got our machine as a wedding present, and we had asked for the Panasonic 'raisin and nut' dispenser model because it has a timer on it (hello, fresh bread baking in the morning), but also because it's one of the few models that doesn't have a poor track record for breaking down.  We priced it out, just because we were curious, and if you're making two loaves a week, you could even get a fancy Zojirushi and break even by the end of the year.

We've come a long way in just two weeks.  My daughter might be able to make bread all by herself in a year, except that the pan is too heavy and the machine is too tall.

We've tweaked the recipe a bit from the book.  This is what we do:

1    tsp yeast (either bread machine or regular dry yeast.  doesn't seem to matter.)
1    cup white flour
2    cups brown flour
1/2 cup rye flour
2    tblsp sugar
2    tsp salt
2    tblsp oil
2    cups water (usually a bit less than that, and then add more depending on how the dough is mixing up.)
1    cup or less of a 10 grain mix, or a handfull of sunflower seeds or whatever is in the house

I measure pour the flour and oil, and I prepare the 2 cups of water to be poured.  My daughter does the rest and has started to memorize the ingredients.  She knows which buttons to press on the machine to make it start, and I like to show her the dough being mixed so that she knows what kind of a consistency it should have for it to turn out right.

I'm in love with this bread.  It's gritty but moist.  It's dark and flavourful, but rises well.  It melts in your mouth.  Plus, it doesn't have that weird cardboard flavour that most store-bought bread has.  Probably because it doesn't have preservatives in it.