Bread Makes The Meal

It's time to go back and find some more bread recipes. Admittedly, I haven't made much bread lately: on the other hand, I never want to be short of ideas. There are a number of bread blogs and sites around, but mostly either they post relatively infrequently, like breadbasketcase , or they're large bread-related forums, like The Fresh Loaf , that can overwhelm with the sheer amount of information they present. Either drowning in or starving for new information is my fate, if I'm not careful.. My journey with bread ought to be a joyous exploration; there's certainly enough information out there to help me along. I just have to learn how to swim with the information, not drown in it. Starting tomorrow, you will (I hope) see more of this. God speed, and remember: All sorrows are less with bread .

Before I start on the main post, I must apologize for the long delay. You don't want to know what the last few days have been like. So, Sally Lunn bread was a major success. I don't think I got everything quite perfect; but the end result was that one of the two loaves I made was gone in three days. With very strong approval from Nancie and her mom as well. There was the "not-very-bready" taste to it I remembered; I can now say definitively that this results from the eggs. Three eggs are more than I usually put in two loaves of bread (which is to say, more than none). And one thing I learned from it was that only about 25% of the pictures I take are really good enough to use as illustrations. Here's the recipe, then: Sally Lunn Bread ½ cup warm water 1¾ teaspoons (1 packet) active dry yeast (I actually used 2, I don't remember my reasoning at the time) 1 cup warm milk ½ cup (1 stick) butter ¼ cup sugar 2 teaspoons salt 3 eggs, well beat...

And better, I think. See if you agree. Looking back, I don't see that I've ever posted Leslie Bilderback's "Amish White Bread" recipe. Assuming I haven't, here it is, then (unless she tells me to please take it down): Amish White Bread 1 cup warm water ⅓ cup sugar 1¾ teaspoons (1 packet) active dry yeast 1 cup flour 2 tablespoons oil (I usually use olive oil for flavor) ¾ teaspoon salt 2 more cups flour So start off by dissolving the sugar in the warm water (as always, not much warmer than body temperature) and adding the yeast. Stir until the yeast is all mixed in and go read a book or something for ten minutes. When the yeast is all foamed up on the top, add the oil, and then stir in the first cup of flour. When this is well mixed, add the salt, and then the other two cups of flour. Flour your surface, and empty the bowl out. You should have a soft, but fairly cohesive, dough. Knead this for eight or nine minutes. It'...

I thought I had some really good pictures for you tonight. What I actually have for you is some good evidence that it's difficult (for me at least) to take good pictures with a cell phone camera. Difficult enough that I'm going to go back to borrowing Nancie's mom's camera to take the pictures. But I'll post the pictures because I want to at least show you something . I made the Milk and Water Bread over the weekend. It didn't go exactly as I had planned the recipe; the sponge was considerably wetter, and I let the dough rise for a lot longer (because we got occupied in making the slow cooker ribs). Didn't seem to hurt, though: The bread came out just as tasty. After all that baking, I could hardly wait to eat! The next thing, obviously, was to use the bread appropriately, namely, to mop up the barbecue sauce from dinner: Fortunately, there was plenty of bread for all that sauce. Again, I apologize for the poor quality of the pictures. But...

I did in fact finish the Tuscan White Hearth Bread last night. I let it rise for two hours before dinner then put it in the fridge over dinner. So it rose for another hour in there. I punched it down, and tried shaping it into a boule. Didn't work very well. Apparently I didn't follow my instructions, kind of folded the dough up, and when I tried to roll it, it tore. But okay, whatever, I thought; I went ahead and crosshatched it per the recipe. Then when I baked it ...! I thought I had a picture to insert here, but I must have missed it. Let's just say that although it did come out golden brown, it looks like it's one loaf sort of "budding off" a smaller loaf (perhaps it's reproducing, like yeast?). Next time I'll carefully attend to the instructions that I actually gave people :-/ I still have to see how it tastes; I'll do that this afternoon when I come home. But it smells delicious, and I'll call it a success.

For those of you who were hoping for another post on my bread yesterday, apologies; I didn't finish the bread until well after 11:00 PM, and didn't get into bed for another hour. So I'm exhausted this morning. So anyway, yesterday I did decide to do the Milk and Water Bread from the Bread and Fancy Breads book I found on Google books. Again, here's the recipe exactly as it appears in the book: Dissolve one yeast cake in quarter of a cupful of lukewarm water, stir in enough flour to make a batter, cover and leave to rise. Mix together a cupful of scalded milk, a cupful of boiling water, a tablespoonful of lard, an equal quantity of butter, and a teaspoonful and a half of salt. Stir this mixture into the sponge and add five cupsful of sifted flour, or one cupful of white flour and enough entire wheat flour to knead. In the latter case add also three tablespoonsful of molasses. This bread may be mixed, raised and baked in five hours, and should be mixed in the morni...

So the last time I made the sourdough boules they were hard, burned in a couple of places, and generally not very appetizing. So this time around I changed a few things up. I fed the starter a few hours before I made the sponge. I let the sponge develop for about 10 hours (didn't start the bread until almost 8:00 at night). I let the dough rise for an hour and a half, instead of an hour. And (most importantly, I think) I put the temperature at 375 °F instead of 475. (I did worry in the last ten minutes or so that the loaf was very pale, so I put the oven up to 425 for the last ten minutes.) The result: Wow—what a difference. I do have to say, though, that the crust is quite hard in cutting. I did remember the steam pan; I'm not sure what the problem is. It's not breaking my teeth, though. Just hard to cut. But Delicious! Tonight I was going to make rosemary rolls; our next-door neighbor has volunteered her rosemary plants. It's really hot, though,...