My husband was gone on another business trip this week. So naturally it’s a great time for the battery in the carbon monoxide detector to die. At 5:15 in the morning. When my boys were amazingly sleeping through the night. I desperately worked as quickly as possible to remove the battery cover to see what kind it needed. That battery cover is screwed on. While I was unscrewing the cover it started beeping even louder – clearly it didn’t like my hot hands covering up the sensor. The single beep that finally emitted from the detector was almost literally ear splitting. An hour later, my ear is still ringing and in pain. How the boys slept through that baffles me beyond words. I rushed the thing outside to continue working as quietly as I could.

No use trying to go back to sleep for only an hour. Might as well write a blog post about bread!

We had a “heat wave” this week. Meaning it wasn’t quite the opportune time to have scheduled that soup!

I actually didn’t find it to be too hot this week, though. The low humidity levels really don’t make the almost-90 degree weather unbearable. I’m too used to the humidity of Florida and Alabama. A little extra sunscreen and water kept us going to the playground!

That being said, we don’t have air conditioning. It hasn’t been an issue because we just leave the windows and doors open to let in the ocean breezes. But those breezes that are usually chilling me too much in the early afternoons have been missing and the sunshine has been pouring in making our living room quite warm.

Running the oven makes my tiny kitchen a sauna! So, I started this bread at 6 am. My bread rose much more quickly here in warm California than anything ever had back in Ohio!

It’s been hard to find Sugar-Free bread so I decided to follow through on our unprocessed challenge. Making this bread was actually really quick and easy to do. I simply followed the recipe on the back of the bag of bread flour, omitting the sugar. There really isn’t any excuse not to bake bread at home with the technology of the stand mixer! The real test will be to see if Firecracker will eat his PB&J off of homemade bread.

This recipe makes 1 loaf.

Sugar-Free White Sandwich Bread

Ingredients:

• 1 C water
• 1/3 C milk
• 1 1/2 tsp active yeast
• 3 3/4 C bread flour
• 1 1/2 tsp salt

Steps:

1. Combine the milk and water in a glass measuring cup. Microwave in 10 second intervals until it reaches a temperature between 105-110 degrees F.
2. Add the yeast to the warm liquid and let proof, about 10 minutes.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, stir the flour and salt. Mix in the yeast and knead until the dough comes together around the hook.
4. Transfer the dough to a lightly greased bowl. Cover with a towel and let rise until doubled in size.
5. Punch down the dough, form into a loaf and set in a 9″ x 5″ loaf pan. Cover again and let rise until it domes above the edge of the pan.
6. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
7. Bake bread 45-50 minutes, until an internal temperature of 190 degrees F is reached.