A first attempt at making bread
by Rebecca on 2008-07-11
Lately, weʼve both had baking bread on the brain, so I suggested that our date night be a night of baking bread. And William simply said, “I want to make bread.” And so we checked in my trusty, never-fail Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook to find something suitable for our date night on Thursday. The recipe we settled upon without any argument (amazingly enough, because there are many delicious-looking breads in that cookbook) was Honey-Oat Bread, a recipe that had flour, oats, honey, and milk, and a smattering of other ingredients that magically turn into bread.
(Note: to those of you who are food blog addicts, this description of our collective efforts will seem horribly undescriptive. Just go to the pictures of the bread …) The bread-making process is simple enough but so much more pleasant with a helper. William got the yeast ready, while I combined the wet ingredients. William stirred the dough while I added flour. I kneaded, somewhat nervously because kneading is not an intuitive process for me, while William doled out more flour as needed. William washed the bowl for the bread to rise in. After the bread had doubled in size, William rolled it out and put it into the loaf pans. And then we had to wait for it to rise some more before finally popping it into the oven. It had to bake for 45 minutes, and we could smell the bread after 20. Mmm!
And here is what we ended up with.
So, it looked pretty good. You may ask how it tasted. We ate it for breakfast this morning, and I ate one slice untoasted and one slice toasted. Iʼm not that big of a toast fan to begin with, but this bread was actually better toasted than plain. Amazing!
I think we can call this one a success. Any suggestions for the next kind of yeast bread that we should try?