By Bread Alone: A Low Sodium Bread Recipe

Bread, such a basic food staple.  It is cheap, filling and comforting.  Sandwiches are a lunchtime go-to.  A slice of bread easily completes a meal.  Toast with a smear of butter and jam is a breakfast worth smiling over.  What do you do when you realize 2 slices of store bought bread contains nearly a meal's allotment of sodium plus any number of barely pronounceable additives?  You fire up the Kitchen Aid and make your own!  Through trial and error, lots of error, I managed to find a combination of ingredients that produces a loaf, or rolls, that easily rival the softness, squishability and tender crust of that loaf of Bunny Bread I used to buy each week.  The best part?  Each roll or slice has 5 or less mg of sodium and zero laboratory inspired ingredient names!

Take a look at the ingredients in the loaf of bread I used to buy:

I don't know about you, but ingredients that are primarily used for agricultural fertilizers and in such products as Round-Up, make me a wee bit icked out when they show up in my food.  Ammonium Sulfate  All lecturing aside, especially since I'm totally down with eating at McDonald's on occasion, any of us can make a loaf of bread with just a few ingredients and a little patience.  You, and I, will make bricks on occasion.  Don't get discouraged.  Save those for breadcrumbs! 

On to the recipe!  This recipe will make an 8x8 pan of dinner rolls (9-12) plus a small loaf or 8-12 sub rolls. 

Mix the following in a somewhat large bowl, or the bowl of your Kitchen Aid:

1 cup of warm water

2 tsp sugar

2 tsp honey (a good squirt or dollop)

1 packet, or 2.25 tsp of yeast

Let that sit for a few minutes until you see the yeast start to bloom/foam.

Then add the following:

1 cup warm water mixed with 1 T buttermilk powder (or .25 cup buttermilk plus .75 cup warm water)

1 T vinegar

2 T potato flour (or buzz 2 T plain instant potato flakes in a coffee grinder and use that)

2 T olive oil

.25 tsp onion powder

4-6 cups bread flour (add about a cup at a time until the dough looks and feels right)

Mixing is easiest if you use a stand mixer like a Kitchen Aid.  Use the dough hook and let it do the work for you.  Once the dough is cleaning the sides of the bowl, let it work for a few minutes.  Then stop the mixer and check the consistency.  If it is still sticky, add another .5 cup of flour.  Once you are happy with the consistency, let it knead in the mixer for at least 5 minutes.  I prefer my dough a little on the tacky side, but not overly sticky, after it has been beat around in the KA for about 5 minutes.  Unless your KA behaves better than mine, don't get too far away during the kneading time.  Mine tries to walk off the counter!  While it is kneading,  prep a big bowl and a sheet of plastic wrap with some olive oil or Pam.  When the dough is ready, oil your hands and transfer it to the oiled bowl.  Flip it over a time or two so all surfaces have a nice coating of oil then cover with the oiled plastic wrap.  Let it rise until almost doubled...45 minutes to an hour usually.  Then punch it down, shape it how you like and preheat your oven to 375*.  Again, make sure the shaped dough has a decent coating of oil so the surface doesn't dry out and form a crust.  Let it rise again to almost doubled...30-45 minutes usually.  Bake time will depend on what you shaped the dough into.  A pan of rolls will take about 20 minutes.  Sub rolls closer to 30 minutes and a loaf of bread might take 40.  Ovens vary so much that you'd be wise to check on it once you start really smelling that fresh baked bread aroma.  I thump mine and listen for a hollow sound to check for doneness. 

Now comes the hard part.  If you made a loaf of bread, wait until it is totally cooled before you slice into it!  It will keep 3 or 4 days in a ziploc if you do.  Cutting it while it is warm will let all the steam out and stale the bread really quickly.  If you're going to eat it all for dinner tonight, slice on into it, slather it with butter and enjoy!  Up next, I'll be posting how I modify this recipe to make low sodium cinnamon rolls.  I'd love to hear your experiences with bread making...successes and failures!