Baking Bread, not "Baking Bread"

'm going to share a secret with y'all, my best bloggy friends.  It's the secret to homemade whole wheat bread perfection.  I don't know why it works -- I'm sure there's some science behind it, but I prefer to think of it as magic.  I'll tell you . . . right after you listen to me ramble about something that I think is funny for a minute.  I went through a phase a year or so ago where I vowed to make ALL my family's bread from scratch.  I had just been given a super-cool wheat grinder and I was excited.  I'm over that now.  Fresh baked bread is more of a sometimes-food than a staple now days.  But at the time I was determined to do it!  Often it would get to be 9 or 10 in the evening and I would realize that I didn't have bread for the kids' lunches the next day.  Brent would beg me to let him just go to the store and buy a loaf, "just this once."  I was relentless.  Mostly because I have a fah-ah-ah-ah-ntastic recipe {given to me by my friend Sarah}that is quick and easy to make, but also because I have tunnel vision when I decide to do something.  And also because I love the smell of bread baking.  We would be up until midnight baking the bread on those nights.  I would tell Brent not to wait up, but how can you sleep when you know you're just minutes {or an hour} away from that first warm crust piece of homemade bread?!  Obviously he would be tired at work the next day.  When his co-workers asked him what he had been doing the night before that made him so tired he would say, "Baking bread with my wife."  They would look at one another knowingly and nudge Brent.  "'Baking Bread', huh?  Is that what you Mormons call it?"  Well, no.  Not really.  Most Mormons don't refer to "it" as "baking bread".  Maybe some do.  I don't know.  We sometimes do now.  I don't bake bread {literally} as often as I used to, but Brent will sometimes say, "Hey, honey, did you want to "bake some bread" tonight? {wink, wink, nudge, nudge}.

Anyway, thanks for letting me reminisce for a moment.  You've earned your bread making secret.  It's Dough Enhancer.  I didn't know what it was either.  Sarah's recipe called for it.  In Utah, where there are a lot of Mormons baking bread {literally} you can buy it in the grocery store.  Not down here.  I looked all over for it.  In one last, desperate attempt to find it I went to Whole Foods and asked in the bakery.  The girl there said, "We don't sell chemicals here.  We only sell whole foods."  And she didn't say "duh", but it was implied in her tone of voice.  So I went home with my tail between my legs and googled it.  Turns out you can make dough enhancer, and guess where I found all the ingredients?  Whole-flippin'-Foods, baby.  I refrained from going by the bakery and sticking my tongue out at snotty baker girl when I went back to buy the stuff.  It's a combination of Lecithin granules, citric acid and ginger.  It is nothing short of magic.  I put a little scoop of it in all of my yeast-bread dough -- even white bread, which may not technically need it, but better to be safe than sorry if you ask me.  Because it's NOT a chemical.  It's not.

Here's the recipe I used:

1C. lecithin granules

1 Tbsp. vitamin C powder

1Tbsp. ground ginger

Mix well and store in an air-tight container.

I bought a big canister of lecithin granules and measured out how many cups it was and added the vitamin c and ginger accordingly.  After mixing it all up. I poured it back in the lecithin canister to store it.  I think it cost me about $15 to make a big can of dough enhancer, which is only about half gone now.  Totally worth the investment.  I'll even re-post Sarah's bread recipe for you {because you did sit through two stories instead of one}:

You'd be hard-pressed to find an easier, yummier bread recipe anywhere, but you won't have to worry about finding the dough enhancer!  {And you'll find the wheat gluten in the bulk bins at whole foods or any major grocery store.}  Enjoy!