2019 kind of caught me on the wrong foot to begin with. I really had to sit down and evaluate what was going to be the turning point for me this year. My word for this year is consistency.

I thrive on the routine, and I am really starting to get back into the swing of who I am and what I want for this homestead. There are some truly big goals in play and in oder to get where I want to go I have to slowly pick away at the ice outside my door and put one foot in front of the other, one day at a time.

One of many of my goals this year is to provide more of my own food myself. I have started small with chickens, their egg supply comes in on a very regular basis and I have also tried to make more coffee at home so that I can cut the latte expense in town. I’ve been planning on simplifying my diet to contain more easily homestead sourced items. I started making my own kombucha (I’ll share about that in a later blog post) and loaves for slicing as well as easy breads for a quick breakfast on the go.

White slicing Bread:

2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

2 Tablespoons sugar

1 Tablespoon Salt

2 Cups milk  (luke warm to the touch- I use alternative milk and it works just fine)

5-6 cups All purpose flour

Butter

Rosemery essencial oil

1. Dissolve the sugar within the warm-ish milk. Feed to the yeast within a bowl.
2. Add salt then begin adding the flour one cup at a time. As you mix the dough should begin to no longer stick to the side of the bowl. When this occurs stop adding flour, this should be somewhere between 5-6 cups.
3. Flour the counter and begin to knead the dough pull the dough down from the top and press it to the bottom, then rotate it 15 degrees to your right or left and repeat.
4. Form a nice tight ball and then place back into your mixing bowl, cover with a dry cloth and leave to rise. The longer you leave it the fluffier your bread will be. I usually wait until my loaf has risen to 2-3x the original size.
5. Cut the dough in half and knead it again until a new tight ball of dough is formed.
6. Melt butter and add one drop of rosemary. Use the melted butter to grease your bread pans.
7. Place each new ball of dough into the buttered pans and then coat the dough with the melted butter as well.
8. Cover the dough and let rest for another hour in the pans. (I wait until the dough almost touches all sides of the pan.
9. Preheat oven to 425 and bake bread for 25 minutes then turn oven off and crack the door to allow bread to cool within the over.

I wait a day before slicing the entire loaf and placing it in a bag within the fridge, I just find it is easier to slice with a knife in a uniform way after it has rested a day. But as soon as the bread is done it is great sliced with butter to enjoy with dinner or simply as a snack.

Zuchinni Bread

3 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1 Tbls. Cinnamon

2 1/2 – 3 cups of zuchinni

3 eggs

1/2 pear sauce

1/2 coconut oil

2 1/2 cups sugar

1 Tbls. Vanilla

1 cup chopped pecans

1. Mix all the liquid ingredients including the sugar.
2. In a sepparate bowl mix together the dry ingredients, once mixed well slowly incoporate them into the wet ingredients, folding over with a spatula every now and then.
3. Once both groups of ingredients are combined include the shredded zuchinni as well.
4. Grease two bread pans with melted butter and pour half the batter into each pan.
5. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
6. Bake for 45-55 minutes. When toothpick inserts into the middle smoothly and comes out clean the bread is ready to pull out and let rest in the pan.

Zucchini is such a great bread for gift giving as well as quick easy breakfasts. My mom has always been my favorite though and I can never seem to quite hit the mark like she does. Somehow she aways gets this great light, sweet and flaky crust. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.