From the kitchen | Baked fresh today

Freshly baked bread has been in the news this week. Australian supermarket Coles has been advertising its bread as baked today and sold today, an ethical and likely legal stretch (read more here and here).

We switched to baking our own bread not long after we moved here in January. I don't make it to the supermarket often and Aussie Farmers' bread failed to impress me (although I love their service for other products).

I asked Darren for a breadmaker for Christmas and, after extensive googling, I chose the Panasonic SD 2501. It works a treat. I often set it in the evening on delay and we can smell it the minute we wake.



Until this week, I had used a variety of Laucke bread mixes and settled on the multigrain mix. I can't stand the smell of the soy and linseed mix and Darren isn't a fan of the white bread mix (which is quite delicious).

On Wednesday, I tried one of Gail's bread recipes that is based on the Laucke multigrain mix (or Defiance hi-fibre grain mix). Delicious! The texture and crust is a vast improvement on the mix alone.



And so the experimenting started...  

Experimentations in multigrain bread

Basic recipe

1 1/2 teaspoons yeast
3 cups Laucke multigrain bread mix
2 tablespoons milk powder
2 tablespoons olive oil
320mL water

And the variations I've tried...

* 2 tablespoons sunflower kernels, 2 tablespoons sesame seeds, 3 tablespoons linseeds (I substituted LSA mix because I couldn't find linseeds), 3 teaspoons mixed herbs

* 2 tablespoons sunflower kernels, 2 tablespoons LSA mix, 2 tablespoons chia seeds (this loaf was pretty much polished off in our morning!)

* 3 tablespoons sunflower kernels, 3 tablespoons LSA mix, 3 tablespoons quinoa flakes

(On my breadmaker, I use the multigrain bread setting number 6 and choose the large or medium size.)