What’s the old adage…  When life hands you lemons, make lemonade?!?  That’s kinda how today is…

We had plans for a fun day with friends and Victor threw his back out last night.  Not good.  And definitely not up for an hour drive in the car.

Regroup.

Now  having to plan a couple of meals I wasn’t planning on cooking, I took stock of the larder; plenty of food, lots of sandwich-fixin’s – but no bread.  My choice was to drive the mile to the grocery store and buy a loaf – or bake some.  It’s not everyone who will think it’s easier to bake a loaf of bread than run to the store, but, for me, not having to deal with a grocery store on a Saturday is a good thing.  Besides, have you ever looked at the ingredient list on a basic loaf of grocery store bread?!?  Yuck.

So out came Mom’s trusty cook book.

She had a recipe for a basic wheat bread that I default to whenever I want a quick couple of loaves.  It is really good, really easy, and pretty quick to pull together.  I really haven’t been making a lot of loaves of bread, lately.  They have been mostly free-form rustic breads.  I thought it time to break out the loaf pans and have at it.

The recipe calls for two loaves and I knew we’d never go through them before it went stale, so I decided one loaf and a few rolls would work.

I started the process, went to get the whole wheat flour – and noticed there wasn’t any!  I had rye, buckwheat, graham, whole wheat pastry, and unbleached cake, all-purpose, and bread flours.  No whole wheat.  Whole wheat bread became white bread.  I’ll live with it.

I followed the recipe as written, except I used the bread flour and omitted the egg.

I baked the rolls for about 20 minutes and the bread for maybe 38 minutes.  It also rose a lot faster today than usual – white flour will generally rise quicker than a more-dense wheat, anyway – but it’s hot and muggy outside… the perfect summer proofing box.

It all came out great.  Perfectly light, really flavorful, lots of body – and the long rolls were perfect for leftover sausage and peppers.