I have been looking a lot more at my food labels because of this, and it is amazing to me how many things in the grocery story have HUGE ingedient lists, with many names I don't recognize.
Take for instance the bread we have at our house. Here are the ingredients:
Enriched bleached flour
Niacin
Iron
Thiamin Mononitrate
Cracked Whole Wheat
Water
High Fructose Corn Syrup
Gluten
Honey
Salt
Soybean Oil
Yeast
Butter
Raisin Juice Concentrate
Distilled Vinegar
Calcium Sulfate
Dough Conditioners (Ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides, asorbic acid, azodicarbonmide, enzymes)
Yeast Nurtrients (Monocalcium phosphate, Calcium Sulfate, Ammonium Sulfate and/or Calcium Carbonate)
Corn Starch
Soy Lecithin
Soy Flour
What a list!
I like the idea of trying to get food that's more "real", and so I decided to try and make some wheat bread. I found a recipe the other day that claimed "It's very soft and moist and if you didn't see the light tan color you would almost think it was white bread."
I bought the ingredients at the store. I broke out Great Grandma's Bosch, and I made some bread today.
It was kind of a big flop.
I'm sure that I could do a little better next time. For one, I could actually try making the bread on it's own, as opposed to making it in conjunction with dinner (fajitas, yum!). I think we all KNOW we can multi-task well, but it doesn't always work as well as we think. I could check on my ingredients (some of them have probably been in the back of the pantry for maybe more moons than might be good. For example, I did note the powdered milk I used said best by 2009. Or maybe it was 2008.) Goldilocks-like I might have had water that was "too hot" or "too cold" as opposed to "just right" (warm!)
I'm not giving up. I hear bread is tricky, and wheat bread even more so. My goal is to have some wonderful wheat bread one of these days! It may just take a little practice.
