Kyle Thomas

The Website of Kyle Thomas (KyleWith)

Baking Bread for the Homeless

Well it is about time I do something with this bread I like making. I have been playing with this idea for a while but I have finally put in motion the project of baking bread for the homeless of Yellowknife.

It wont be big and fancy like I have seen in other cities. I’m simply going to make a bunch of bread and drop it off at the Salvation Army’s bread racks.

They get bread dropped off on Monday and Thursday, so my plan is to drop off a bunch of loaves on Wednesdays.

The nice thing about this project is that I will be getting the flour and sugar for the bread from Yellowknife’s Food Rescue program.

Bread making

Stay tuned for an update.

How I make bread that will blow your mind

Hello again, It is I, your favourite single 22-year-old male, here to share with you how I make bread. To help you understand why I might be able to do this, I will tell you that in the last two weeks I have made over 12 loaves of bread and have no plans on stopping. It was requested on Twitter that I share my process, so here it goes.

First of all, I use a bread maker, so I suppose it isn’t really making bread but it is a good place to start and mostly fail proof.

Bread Making

When it comes to combining the ingredients there really isn’t any secret, I just throw everything thing in. To be totally honest I hardly measure anything anymore. Yeast, flour, sugar, salt, marg and water. I do store my yeast in the fridge, that being said it also expired in 2011… still works. I also try to use room temperature water.

Once all the ingredients are in the bread maker I set it to the dough cycle and let it go. My primary Black and Decker maker takes 1:30hrs to mix, while my secondary one takes 2:25hrs. Why? I have no clue. I normally stop the second one early and knead it a bit myself.

Herb Dough

Now as soon as it is done I make sure I’m there to transfer it to bread tins. When I first take the dough out of the bread maker I kneaded it around for no more than 10 seconds or so in a small bit of flour so it isn’t as sticky.

Bread Making

To let it rise I have tried several things, just sitting out on the stove, in the sun light, under a lamp and right in the stove after it had warmed up to about 175º. I don’t recommend this last one as each time I have done this the dough rises really well but as soon as you take it out it deflates. I’d say in the sun or under a lamp over night is best.

Bread Making

Then baking it is dead simple, heat the oven to 375º and bake for 18 to 20 mins give or take. I don’t normally time it too closely as my internal clock is pretty good for the bread now.

Herb Bread

Take the bread out of the oven and remove it from the tin to cool. My bread always comes out very soft and rarely very dense.

If there is something I’d like to improve on it would be getting the dough to rise better and having the end product be a little denser (I think they are related).

White Bread Ingredients:

  • 1TSP – Yeast
  • 2 Cups – Flour
  • 1TSP – Salt
  • 2 TBSP – Sugar
  • 2 TBSP – Margarine or Shortening
  • 3/4 Cup – Water

I have also made, herb bread with fresh herbs I’ve grown, cheese bread and garlic and onion.

Adventures in Bread

My time in the kitchen can really not be defined by one type of cooking or baking. I’m sporadic and unsettling. You never know what I’m going to come up with or get into next.

Over the past couple days it has been baking bread. I got the breadmaker a couple weeks ago and made dinner rolls and pizza dough but never actual bread.

White Bread

However I really wanted to make my own loaves of bread so I could stop having to by them from the stor… and give them away.

So the first thing I did was try and make the bread completely by breadmaker. I realize to an actual baker this would be considered cheating, heck any use of a breadmaker might be cheating, but I wanted to try it. It didn’t work.

The bread that came from the breadmaker was tough and compact. It was as if it didn’t rise properly. So I wasn’t doing that again.

Herb Bread

I then settled with making the dough in the breadmaker and then letting the bread rise for an hour or so under some low heat, in the sun, under a lamp or on a warm stove. When the bread had risen enough I through the loaf in the over for 19mins at 375°

Needless to say I was onto something. So far I have made two loaves of herb bread using my fresh basil, oregano and thyme and a loaf of white bread.

So the question now is, who wants a loaf?