Weekend Cooking: Baking Bread & Eating Out of the Freezer

How are you all holding up? I hope everyone is well and finding clever ways to eat out of their pantries.

Our meals this week were grilled pork chops with a frozen veggie, pasta with my homemade sauce (frozen from last summer), chicken soup (also from the freezer), and tuna salad sandwiches. I'm not sure yet what we'll have tonight, but I'm leaning toward risotto.

If you follow me on Instagram, then you already know that I baked bread yesterday. I think the yeast I ordered last month will be here within the next ten days, so I decided I could start using what I had in the house.

I bake bread all kinds of ways: completely by hand, using my stand mixer, and using my bread machine. No matter how I mix and rise the dough, I always shape the loaves myself and bake in the oven. When I'm super busy with work, I let the bread machine do the kneading and the first rise. That's what I did yesterday.

Using frozen vegetables and fruits. Before I get to the bread recipe I wanted to share two tips for frozen foods. Like everyone, we're trying to avoid the grocery as much as possible. I know we could use delivery services and curb-side pickup, but we haven't gone that route. First, available time slots are few and far between; second, if I have to make a substitution because the store is out of an item, I'd rather do it in person. Thus our reliance on the freezer to make it to the next shopping trip.

The other day when I was opening up a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, I had a craving for the roasted veggies of yesteryear (as in early March). I wondered what would happen if I roasted the frozen vegetables instead of boiling them. As it turns out, roasted frozen vegetables is a thing, and I wasn't the first to do it. Try it . . . you'll thank me.

We also have several bags of frozen fruit to turn to when we run out of oranges and bananas. To make the fruit easier to use and to increase its versatility, I made up small bags of mixed fruit. We can now easily pull out a single serving to use in cereal or oatmeal or to eat for a snack. I've been making up ten packs at a time -- it takes only five minutes or so. Our current fruit mix is blueberries, cherries, peaches, and mangoes.

Now on to the bread recipe, which comes from Beth Hensperger's The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook, which has been a favorite of mine for years. As I said, I used my bread machine for the kneading and first rise, but you could make this bread using your preferred method (stand mixer, food processor, by hand). The ingredients make one 9-inch loaf.

Flaxseed Whole Wheat Bread

• 1 1/8 cup water
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 2 cups bread flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup nonfat dry milk
• 2 tablespoons flaxseed
• 1 tablespoon gluten
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons yeast

Mix the ingredients and knead using your usual method or following your bread machine's instructions.

After the first rise, shape the dough into a loaf, put it in a greased 9-inch loaf pan, and let it rise again. Slash the top of the dough and bake in a preheated 375F oven for 40-45 minutes or until the internal temperature is about 200F.

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