Bread 101

You. Can. Do. It.

I know lot's people have tried to make bread and failed, are afraid to make bread, or made it and it looked amazing but tasted like a brick. Therefore, I have made a pact with myself to teach as many people how to make bread as possible because it's so worth it! You can't even put this stuff in the same category as store-bough bread.
Why?
First off, you make it from scratch and get a great sense of accomplishment when you are done. Number two, you have control over what you put in it, and whether it's organic, non-gmo, all natural, etc. Third, it's WAY healthier and has whole, real, and original ingredients. And last of all, working for your food is in the Bible, so how bad can it be?

2 Thessalonians 3:10

For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: 

"The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat."

Those are the loaves me, my sis, and my friends made this week. They came out perfect!

Of course, you work to pay for your food. But still, making it from scratch is overall much more wholesome for soul, body and mind.

I learned from my mom, who learned from her mom, who learned from her mom's 1940 Betty Crocker cookbook. That thing is so sacred, we aren't aloud to have it near food or cooking supplies, and has to be up on the windowsill away from the sink to use it. My great-grandma even covered the outside with contact paper! 

So cool.

However, not all people have 77 year old tried and true, simple recipe to work from. And I didn't own that binder either.

So I copied the whole bread recipe shebang. 

Therefore, you get to have it too, because it's in the cloud! It's not perfectly clear, and there are quite a few stains. The thing is, it is so step-by-step you literally have the whole thing written out for you just as good as any youtube video! I'll write notes along the way to help you though:

So this is the basic recipe "white bread" with variations of it below. After making the plain recipe once, feel free to do the variations! After you've done a few of their variations, you're probably experienced enough to make up some of your own. I've done maple-pecan, cinnamon-raisin, honey-walnut, and more that I can't recall. My sister did a oatmeal-raisin flavor, and when she topped it with  whole oats, it looked like a pro baked it!

They refer to a page 90, which is coming next:

This is a step by step instructional on what the recipe just calls kneading and mixing. There is an easier way to do it though, and that's the mixer. First use the paddle attachment to mix the ingredients together in the order on the recipe, and use the kneading attachment for 2 minutes on low or medium to spare your hands. Ours looks like a very wide and smooth corkscrew, but yours might vary. You can also just do it by hand, which B always prefers because she has strong fingers from massaging and guitar playing!

As for rising hacks, we set a plastic bowl with a lid on our heating pad. Make sure to use a towel to protect it from grease and dough! Setting it in a corner can help keep in stray heat.

This part you must do carefully and slowly, making sure to keep the dough smooth. Nothing tragic will happen if you don't, but the bread might marshmallow out of the pan out look awfully lumpy! Beware that your dough might look too small, but after the last rising and baking, you will be amazed at how large it expands.

Refer to your recipe as to how long it needs baking. I must warn you that it is much better to slightly overtake than underbake the slightest bit. Most of the time I add 2-3 minutes to the baking time just in case because doughy bread is pretty disgusting. One recipe can make 2 regular loaves, 6 mini loaves, or 2 dozen biscuits. This next page is recipes for breads that use the white bread recipe.

We've made a few of those, but not all. It's really handy to have when you want to whip up a batch of tasty bread that isn't sweet! 

You won't be able to resist the temptation to break into one of the loaves after you're finished! The whole house will smell like something I can't explain, except that it's a ray from heaven.

I know you can do this, because I did, and my friends who hadn't before did. We had a fun little party doing it.

If you have any questions, just let me know in a comment below!