Farmgirl Fare Recipe: Susan's Farmhouse White Bread

With the wealth of excellent blogs and other websites out here, I've run across so many recipes I want to try. I'm always interested in recipes that are tried-and-true and are a "backbone" recipe of the family table. There are just so many good ones out here, I often get overwhelmed by the sheer number of possibilities, and procrastinate long enough that come dinner time we're back at square one again.

I'm overweight and don't need to be eating a lot of bread. Nevertheless, our approach to eating is never going to be all-or-nothing. I've found that we've needed to purchase a loaf or two of bread for this and that lately, and every time I put a storebought loaf into the shopping cart these days, I think to myself how I could have just as easily used ingredients I already have in the pantry to make a far more satisfying sort.

This always reminds me of my paternal grandmother, who home-made EVERYthing on her table, and fed her family a full meal three times a day...in a manner rarely seen in any family I've ever met. I cannot aspire to that amount of committment because our days share far more demands than that would accomodate...and we simply don't need to eat those sorts of quantities. In the words of Mary Poppins, and in the spirit of eating wholesome home-grown foods in season, "enough is as good as a feast." It's a lesson I'm still striving to learn.

Reducing quantity and keeping quality is part of our goal of simplifying our meals, but I do aim to have them be overall much more satisfying, as we phase out the eating out and all processed foods. We're not there yet, but we're farther there now than we've ever been before. Awareness has been the first step, necessity is the taskmaster, and the satisfaction of it being better nutritionally and budget-wise is the motivation.

Presently, we're eating down our pantry goods, and this includes the white flour. The eventual goals is to incorporate more non-gluten flours, and when using the gluten sort, to learn to ferment them (sourdoughs, etc) and sprouting some of them...but for sure to grind the flours fresh at home. Like I said, it's a series of goals to shoot for, and we're not set up for it just yet, but are headed that direction.

The recipe I chose this weekend, because it looks delicious and basic and would incorporate ingredients I have on hand, is from Susan at Farmgirl Fare. I had seen pictures on her site, but the recipe was not available until the Year In Bread collaborative series was posted. Here it is...it's her delicious Farmhouse White. It looks very much like the homemade bread my grandmother had on hand in some form every time the table was set. There was nothing as good as her food!

I'm a novice bread baker, and this was very easy recipe to attempt. The one mistake I made was in not adding the full amount of salt, and so mine turned out not nearly like it would have had I not forgotten this important ingredient. But it's still so good, it's not lasting long!

There are countless other recipes floating around out here in the blog-o-sphere that look very basic and delicious. I'm glad I tried this one, and I'd love to know some other of the most trusty and cherished bread recipes that are the backbone of YOUR family's meals...anyone care to share? I'm going to slowly try different ones so that some day I'll never go to the store again for bread at all...and it's so much more fun knowing recipes come from like-minded friends :)

What's your favorite bread recipe? You may have already written about it...if so, I'd love if you'd share the link! If you do, I'll to post it for everyone to try :)