The $1,000 Plan: Day Six

It is Day Six of The $1,000 Plan to save $1,000 over the next 4 - 6 weeks. As part of the plan I have embraced to endeavour to achieve this goal, I have also been making homemade bread, rather than purchasing store bought bread.

Looking through the fridge and pantry it was clear if I was going to make bread from scratch, I was going to have to do so without the aid of yeast; we simply did not have any.

As part of our homeschooling programme so far this past year, we have been studying how people celebrate festivals and special occasions. Included in our study, we looked at the history and celebration of St. Patrick's Day and hence learnt how to make Irish Soda Bread.

In order to have bread to this past week, I had to get out the very same recipe and look at whether I had the required ingredients available to me. Sure enough, by shopping the pantry I discovered I could in fact supply our household with bread, be it in the form of a loaf or as buns, and it was going to be via the Irish Soda Bread Recipe we had copied out all those months ago.

Here is the recipe I used, for those who also may be interested in making the change to baking bread from scratch, and from basic ingredients found quite commonly in one's food pantry:

Irish Soda Bread 

This recipe makes 2 loaves.

Ingredients:

680gm of Organic Flour
680gm of Organic Self-raising Wholemeal Flour
1 litre of Organic Milk* 
4 Tbspn of Lemon Juice
4 tspn of Baking Soda

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celsius. 
2. Stir the lemon juice into the milk to make it curdle.
3. Sift both flours and the baking soda into a large bowl. Tip in the bran from the sieve.
4. Add the milk and mix everything together quickly to form a soft dough.
5. Place the dough onto a floured surface and knead it lightly for a few minutes to form two loaves.
6. Place the prepared loaves onto a greased baking tray. You can garnish the top of each loaf with seeds of your choice, or you can choose to simply score a cross on the top with the use of a knife.
7. Carefully place the prepared loaves in to the hot oven.
8. Bake the bread for approximately 30 minutes, until risen and golden brown.
9. Remove loaves from oven and place on a wire rack to cool.

* Please note: I chose to use Rice Milk, so it did not naturally curdle.