I know that's probably not very exciting to anyone but me, but I figure it's blog-worthy. I LOVE breads. And I LOOOOOVE the smell of bread baking. I can stand for an hour inhaling at the grocery store bakery. I have made all kinds of quick breads...banana, beer, zucchini, cranberry, pumpkin, etc. I enjoy baking. Yet yeast breads have always scared the crap out of me. The whole idea of proofing the yeast and punching the dough is just terrifying to me. It's like a souffle - so many chances for something to go wrong! I've just never had the nerve - even though I have a KitchenAid mixer with a dough hook and don't even have to mix the batter by hand (thanks Mom and Dad)! But, the other day, I was reading on a website about being more self sufficient and one of the things it highly recommended was making your own bread. This makes perfect sense on so many levels to me. Hubby and I don't eat normal "sandwich bread." I like to try all the artisan-type breads and even sandwiches are normally on Italian bread. So! I tried it today! My first ever yeast bread.
It started out as a list of ingredients...flour, yeast, water, milk, butter, salt, sugar...A little time in the mixer...
And I had myself an ooey, gooey ball of sticky dough. :-) I put that in a greased bowl in the oven (which was off), covered it with a towel, and got a LOT of ooey, gooey dough!
The recipe called for the dough to be divided in half and rolled out, then put into 2 loaf pans and put back in the oven (still off) to proof for another hour and hopefully double in size again...
Then, I heated the oven to 400 (F) and in they went for 30 mins until they were a lovely, golden brown (if slightly lopsided)...
The results???I'll be honest with you, dear reader. As I was cutting a slice of one of the loaves off, I was full of nerves. The crust was a little...well, crusty, I thought. What if the inside was crusty too? With my heart in my throat, I took a bite...
And then did a HAPPY DANCE!!!! I MADE BREAD!!!!! Oh Happy Day! This recipe was a simple white loaf, but now I've got a hankering to make a slightly more complicated french loaf. There'll be no stopping me now! Each loaf is supposed to be cut into 16 slices, so between the two of them (don't worry, they'll be housed in the fridge after they cool), we'll have enough for 16 sandwiches. That's two weeks of lunches for me and that still leaves 7 slices of bread. :-) Maybe Hubby will actually take his lunch one or two days. Not holding my breath, but it could happen! Now I need to go back to HEB and get some more of their YUMMY sliced turkey and jalapeno lunch meat. I will be one happy camper for lunch. Oooooooooh...I wonder how'd it do for French Toast...
Funny side note: Hubby said that with his ability to make beer, and my ability to make bread, we're masters of yeast. :-) Sure he meant it to sound sweeter and less gross than that. :-)
Yay - I made bread. :-D
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