Thanks for the comments everyone. I don't mind cooking the meals every night, but when I spend all this time/money on baked goods and they taste like crap I can't help but get frustrated. We baked a bread once that had about $10 bucks worth of almond flour in it and I had one piece and just threw it out because it tasted awful and was so dense it wasn't even appetizing. .
Even using regular wheat flour, it takes practice to bake bread and get it to come out right. One reason that bread machines became popular is because you can just dump in the ingredients, set it, and the machine takes care of the rest.
Without a bread machine, you really have to know what you're doing. Baking bread from scratch is an art. You can't knead the bread too much or too little, you have to have the right environment to let it rise, punch it down just right, let it rise again just the right amount, before throwing it in oven. make a mistake in the timing, environment or kneading process, and it just won't bake properly.
We don't go so much by the recipes, more our senses. The feel of the texture, the appesrance of the rising dough, and the smell that tells us when it's done, and when to feed our starters, etc.
We've been making a sourdough starter in place of yeast, and the resulting bread is unbelievably more flavorful and delicious. Some of the "quick breads" we can make using kefir, but not table/sandwich bread. We usually use a combination of flours, including almond, rice, various whole wheat, chick peas, and ancient grains, but my husband's doctor put him on several diets, one of which is low-nickel, that requires he eat only WHITE bread, so we're using regular flour for the first time in years (organic, unbleached and unbromated, of course). just for the time being.
The breads known as "quick breads" are much easier, and faster-- such as banana bread, muffins, biscuits, wraps, white bean tortillas, etc. Quickbreads use baking soda instead of yeast or starter. If you just need a "bread fix", quickbreads are easier to make, and should do the trick, but it is not going to be the same as regular (yeast risen) bread.
For recipes that call for baking powder instead, we make our own by adding cream of tarter to baking soda, along with a touch of those crushed acorns. Commercial baking powder contains chemicals, including aluminum, yuk!
This is a quick bread recipe:
http://www.againstallgrain.com/2012/05/21/grain-free-white-bread-paleo-and-scd/
Make sure you let your avocados ripen before eating! Unripened avacados taste awful, and they only stay ripe for a day or two. If you bought 6, you probably won't want them to all ripen at the same time. Alternate ripening time by putting 2 in the frig, 2 on the counter, and 2 in a paper bag on the counter. The ones in the bag should ripen first, and the ones in the frig. will ripen last.
Avocados have about 250 calories each, about 80% of which is fat. Remember, once you slice them open, they go bad in a day, so only cut one open at a time.
