About a month or so ago, I was reading through the Kingdom parables from Matthew 13 and I was curious about the parable of the yeast working its way through the dough. Here is the verse:

Matthew 13:33:

Jesus also used this illustration: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like the yeast a woman used in making bread. Even though she put only a little yeast in three measures of flour, it permeated every part of the dough.”

Since I have never made bread before, I was curious what this was about. So Alice and I set out to make bread. Here is a picture from the first batch that we made in December.

It turned out great. We were really surprised with our first effort. One thing that we learned from the next batch that we made was that it helped to make the bread softer and gave it a better texture if we kneaded it longer and let it rise a little more. I think with the first batch, we were a little impatient and wanted to enjoy the fruits of our efforts. Making bread is an effort but it is a lot of fun. The only electronic kitchen tool we used was a small mixer to stir in the initial bit of flour into the other liquid ingredients. The whole process took about 2 hours or maybe a little more.

The affect that the yeast has on the bread is slow but remarkable. When everything is thrown together, the yeast is probably less than one percent of the contents, but its affect causes the bread to double in volume as it rises. What can we learn from this?

Making the bread also fit into some of our experiments with living and giving simply. This year, we tried to come up with some new ideas for gifts and we thought that consumables (bread, cookies, brownies, rice crispy treats, wine, coffee) would make good gifts that could be special if hand made and wouldn’t add to the clutter. We gave some of the bread away to friends and family and kept some for ourselves (mostly me).

Here is the recipe if you are interested. It was a recipe I found online and tweaked a little to fit my tastes. Here are the base ingredients and the original recipe. Just follow the preparation instructions provided in the recipe.

Honey Molasses Bread:

• 1/4 cup honey
• 2/3 cup unsulfured molasses
• 2 packages of active dry yeast
• 1 3/4 cup of warm water (between 110 and 115 degrees)
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
• 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• 1/2 cup of quick cooking oats
• 2/3 cup of wheat germ
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 3 1/2 to 4 1/4 cops of all-purpose flour

As you can see from the picture above, there are some chocolate chips in one of the loafs. We used Ghirardelli chocolate chips that Alice found on sale. They gave the bread a nice presentation and added just a dab of chocolate which I think complements the molasses flavor well. Enjoy!