House of Ingrams

I just made another loaf of this bread today and thought perhaps the recipe might be worth sharing.  I haven’t made bread like this in ages since my husband and I have been mostly low carb for years.

However, my older son is home from college for the summer and was blessed to be hired as an intern at an HVAC company in the city.  He is working full time (yay!).  In order to save as much of his salary as possible, he is taking his lunch every day (thanks Dave Ramsey!).  Initially, he was taking turkey and cheese tortilla wraps but had a hankering for a peanut butter and jelly–tortillas just won’t cut it for that, so I whipped up a loaf of homemade bread with my “go-to” recipe.  It’s based on an old bread machine recipe and I adapted it for the KitchenAid mixer. Super easy, this is neither keto, low carb, nor gluten-free.  It IS pretty tasty and arguably healthier than most of the bread from the grocery store.  You can make excellent sandwiches, garlic bread, or the absolute favorite around here, cinnamon toast with it.  My younger son is reaping the benefits of older brother needing good sandwich bread and he is definitely not complaining.

Ages ago when my husband and I had only been married a couple of years we splurged on a bread machine.  And made tons of bread.  And ate tons of bread.  During this time I started developing the recipe for my cinnamon rolls (that’s another post)… Luckily we didn’t actually WEIGH tons (not quite) after several years of this, but finally the bread machine was put away and eventually donated.   Meanwhile, I had acquired a KitchenAid mixer and found that it worked great for mixing and kneading homemade bread without needing to proof yeast or anything fiddly like that.  This method is very forgiving as it allows you some wiggle room with the temperature of your liquid.  You can still kill the yeast if it’s way too hot but it is less likely. Another benefit of the mixer over a bread machine is being able to double the recipe and make 2 loaves of bread or 2 dozen cinnamon rolls with one batch of dough.  I think this would also work with a good food processor but I haven’t tried it.

The ingredient list is simple:  All-purpose flour, powdered milk, sugar, kosher salt, butter, water, and yeast.  That’s it.  I buy the yeast in bulk from Sam’s Club; you get a boatload of it and if you wrap it tightly and store in a jar in the fridge or freezer it lasts for years.  If you want a higher rise you could use bread flour but it isn’t really necessary.

My boys like simple food and this definitely fits that description.  This will keep in a large ziploc bag on the counter for a couple of days but for longer storage, you should refrigerate.  This will mold quickly because there are no preservatives, unlike store bread which seems to have the half-life of uranium.  This will also freeze well, if you wrap it carefully in plastic, then foil, then place in a freezer bag with all the air squeezed out.

When the first loaf I made was all gone I was short on time so we picked up a loaf of “butter bread” from the grocery store.  My son ate it for a couple of days then last night told me it really wasn’t very good compared to mine…  So of course I baked up another loaf for him this afternoon!  Flattery will get you everywhere in this kitchen.  😉

I hope you give this easy recipe a try!  It will make your house smell amazing –we actually sold our first house to the very first people who looked at it by setting up the bread machine to have fresh baked bread when they came over.   I read somewhere that fresh baked bread smell was the leading cause of people buying a home, with chocolate chip cookies a close second.  If we ever sell this house I will bake cinnamon rolls and see how that works out.