Step 2: Changing your shopping routine - Bread
- Ruth Walsh
- Dec 8, 2018
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 18, 2019
If there were such a thing as a Breadivore, my husband would be one. He loves his sandwiches. With two kids in school / play-school and a Breadivore in the house, we go through ALOT of bread in our house - brown bread, wraps, best-of-both sliced pan etc - all of which come in plastic wrapping, most of which is single use. So, we decided to try and eliminate bread from our weekly grocery shop and instead buy flour which comes in paper, and buttermilk which comes in tetrapak.
Making our own:
I love to bake and the kids love to bake with me. A number of years ago, we stopped eating white sliced bread so brown bread was already a staple of our diet. Brown bread is so easy to make and is so much more delicious when it is homemade. You can also customise it to suit your own tastes, adding seeds, nuts, honey, orange juice etc. I find also, that the kids are more likely to try something if they have made it themselves.
When I was on maternity leave after my son was born, I became interested in baking sourdough. I had some rhubarb in the back garden so I cut some and began a sourdough starter. I made sourdough regularly while I was on leave but this fizzled out once I returned to work. Sourdough takes a little bit of commitment. You have to feed your starter regularly and making a loaf of bread takes a whole day (although it only takes about 15 minutes if your actual time over that day). You cant just whip it up like you can a brown bread loaf. But it is worth the wait for the pride you feel when you produce a beautiful loaf that is full of flavour AND is actually good for you. Luckily, I had frozen some of my original starter and so was able to start again easily. I have since frozen another batch just in case. I always keep some in the freezer because a starter is a growing, living thing and it can (and has in the past) gone rancid. If there is a batch in the freezer, its easy to just start again!
Fridays in our house are usually very busy. I don’t work on Fridays so I seize the opportunity to squeeze as much as I can in; cleaning while the kids are in school in the morning, grocery shopping after I pick my son up from play-school, a visit to the library after I pick my daughter up from school, dinner, then swimming lessons, then bed (for the kids anyway). We always have pizza on a Friday as it is quick to make and cooks by itself (as in I don’t have to babysit it)! We usually buy the pizza base from Aldi as it comes from the refrigerator so is better than those on the shelf or in the freezer and because of its rectangular shape, its bigger than a round base and so there is plenty to feed all four of us. The downside? It comes in a single use plastic wrapper. This week, seeing as I already have a sourdough starter, I decided to try and give making our own sourdough pizza base a go. I googled a recipe that would make a quick pizza base as I didn’t have hours let alone 24 hours! I found a recipe that required 41 minutes to make. I made up the dough, kneaded it for about 7 mins and set aside to rest for 30 minutes.
In the meantime, I made my sauce by blitzing a can of tomatoes, some tomato puree, seasoning and herbs in a blender. I usually use half and freeze the other half for the following week. I then chopped my veggies and meats. When the dough was rested, I prepared a baking tray and rolled out the dough. I baked this for about 5 mins on a high heat, took it out and brushed with oil before topping with the sauce, veggies, meat and cheese. Back into the oven on a lower heat (about 180) until cooked. The pizza was delicious, and so satisfying knowing that I had made the whole thing from scratch.
Conclusion:
Not only is making bread easy, its fun to do with the kids and incredibly satisfying! Although it might seem more expensive to begin with because you have to buy all the ingredients, I would say it works out cheaper in the long run and I have definitely seen a difference in my husband and I from a health point of view. Less processed food can only be a good thing!
Happy Baking :)
Recipes:
Sourdough - I use Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s recipe. I have tried many different ones and I feel that his produces the best tasting and a good sized loaf. His recipe can be found here:
Sourdough Pizza Base - www.geniuskitchen.com/amp/recipe/sourdough-pizza-crust-98733
Sourdough Health Benefits - if you are interested in the health benefits of Sourdough, the article below might be of interest to you:
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