Recipe from our cooking club, with my adaptations.

Buy some loaf pans - it’s worth it. Then get flour, wheat flour if you want and/or some oats, yeast, sugar, oil, salt.

In large mixing boil combine 4 cups HOT water (not boiling but hot) with 1/4 cup oil (I use canola) and about 1/2 cup sugar or honey, 1 T salt, and 1 T yeast. I also like to add powdered milk for extra calcium - half cup or so. Sometimes I had a couple eggs for fun/texture. Mix with wire whisk and throw in 1 or 2 cups of oat, keep whisking, and start adding flour. (I’ve been too lazy lately to grind wheat, we have wheat and a grinder but it’s a workout. So sometimes I do white flour with some oats for the extra fiber & texture.) You can alternate wheat flour and white flour, a cup of each at a time, and keep whisking until the you can’t whisk anymore (about 5 or 6 cups for me) then grab a sturdy wooden spoon and start stirring in the flour a cup at a time. When it’s too stiff to stir, make sure your hands are scrubbed well and start mixing in the flour with your hand - at this point stop adding wheat, only use white flour. (It takes me about 10 cups flour, give or take a bit.) When it starts coming away from the sides of the bowl, dump it onto a floured surface and keep kneading until the dough is as smooth as a baby’s bum. Well, minus the oatmeal lumps. Pour a bit of oil into the mixing bowl and make sure it’s well greased, then put the dough back in the bowl and lightly grease the top of the dough (so it doesn’t dry out.) Up to this point takes me about 20 minutes.

Let rise for 30 minutes, punch it down, let rise another 30 minutes, punch it down and divide into 3 equal-ish lumps. Press dough into a rectangle-ish shape about the length of your dough pan, doesn’t have to be exact, and then start on short end and roll up - like a cinnamon roll. Put seam side down in greased loaf pan and lightly grease top of dough again, then let rise until double (about 30 minutes again) and bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes then 350 degrees for 20 minutes. My oven is hot so I have to do lower temp - 350 then 325.

Pull out, dump out, let cool. Slice and eat. YUM!

This recipe makes 3 loaves for us. You can divide it if you want to try 2 loaves (I did 3 cups water but same amount of salt, sugar, oil, yeast) and then just add flour as needed to get right consistency of dough.

I love this recipe so much that I stuck our bread maker in the garage and now I make all our bread by hand. It’s a short investment of time up front and you have to set the timer and keep an eye on it while rising but 2.5 hours start time to hot bread out of oven. It’s really easy, it’s cheap, it’s homemade… we can easily devour a loaf a day but it’s best fresh in the first couple days so we usually give away the 3rd loaf to friends. (So if you’re nearby let us know and we’ll give you a loaf!) And there’s something immensely satisfying about kneading bread dough. It’s one of my times for active meditation. More on that later.

Okay, good. I needed to record this recipe for the kids with all our modifications so when they leave home they can make bread like what they grew up with.

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