A nice afternoon and some homemade bread

We are loving our new early church schedule. We come home from church, feed the kids lunch, put who ever will go down for a nap down for a nap and then decide what we will do with the rest of the afternoon. Today I made bread. Not just any bread, yummy from scratch whole wheat bread. It turned out delicious if I do say so myself. (I'm not sure if I inherited the ability to make yummy bread from my mom or just the ability to brag about it. Every batch my mom makes is her "best one yet". Yep, that's my mom.) All with the help of my non-napping 3 year old of course. And what a helper she is. She really is a good helper. It's me that needs to practice being helped. I think I'm getting better. It went a little something like this:

All out of wheat, so we ground up some more (see picture above). We probably disturbed all of the neighbors who were fortunate enough to get a Sunday nap- this thing sounds like a turbo jet taking off. This is always a great job for Ellie.

Then there's the mixing, shaping and rise time.

No you're not seeing things, there is a ghost in this shot.

And finally, the finished product. Hot out of the oven and almost too pretty to eat. But we managed to anyway.


Before Ellie went to bed she requested a piece of bread with butter on it. When I got out one of my loaves to cut her a slice, she said (ok it was more of a whine on the verge of melt down) "not that bread mom, the other bread". Yes, she was requesting the generic brand bread from Walmart in the fridge (and yes we keep our bread in the fridge). My guess is the bread with the easiest crust to remove got her. I still say my bread is better.

Update:
This morning Ellie requested a piece of the homemade stuff and said,

"This is the best bread ever!"

That a girl. (I did have her repeat herself to make sure I hadn't made it up.) I guess she just needed a good-night's rest to clear her head.