Bread

I'm writing this recipe book on Google Drive and I realized that's a great place to get content for this blog!

So here's the how to bake bread recipe with photos.

I taught myself to bake bread in college using the following book:  Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen.  She explains everything in a very clear way with drawings of what to look for and expect while making your first loaf of bread.  I could not do it better, but here’s trying…

Basic Bread

1 package dry yeast

½ tablespoon salt

1 cup water

1 cup milk

¼ cup olive oil

As much flour as necessary - 5 cups or so

Bread is very simple - the best bread is only a few ingredients - flour, water, salt, yeast maybe some oil.  All other recipes just riff off this.  

The first step in making bread is allocating at least 3 hours of time.  Yes = it takes this long.  You can do lots of other stuff while you’re doing this because bread takes 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there and then baking, but you have to be there for the whole thing.  

Step one and a half - proof your yeast.  Yeast is ALIVE and it needs to grow - the yeast will be the leavening (rising agent) in the dough.   So you have to wake up the yeast and feed it to get it ready to do its job in the bread.  Take 1 cup of warm water (imagine baby bottle milk warm), a package of dry yeast, a couple tablespoons of flour and put them in a bowl together and stir.  Now go away for at least 5 to 10 minutes.  Go fill the dishwasher or wipe down the counters.  Now come back and check on your yeast.  It should be bubbly and have risen from where it is.  If it isn’t...something is wrong - maybe the water was too hot or the package of yeast was too old.  Start again.  If it looks right, move on to the next paragraph.

Add the rest of the ingredients, milk, flour, salt  and stir that up til it forms a ball of dough. Flour a board and prepare to get messy.  Put the dough onto the board and knead the bejezus out of that thing.  Add more flour as necessary.  You are incorporating more flour into the dough and you will be kneading for 5 minutes or so.  Longer if you are hard core.  Now oil the inside of a big bowl and put the dough in it, rubbing it all up in the oil and flipping it so the top is oiled and shiny.  Cover it with a dishcloth and GO AWAY FOR ONE HOUR!  Go watch and episode of a tv show.

An hour later, you should pull away that dishcloth and have an epic surprise!  The dough should have doubled in size!  Now for the fun part.  PUNCH IT!  Punch that dough in the face!  And it should shrink back like something that shrinks.  Okay, pull the dough out of the bowl and put it on that floured board (I didn’t tell you to clean that up did I?!)  Now knead that dough again - for about 5 minutes or longer if you are still hardcore.  Now you are going to form the bread into the shape it will take when it is baked.  You could braid it or you could form it into a ball or you could put it into a greased loaf pan.  If you are putting it on a baking sheet as a braid or ball or as rolls at this point you can either grease the pan or you could put a sprinkling of corn meal on the pan to keep it from sticking.  If you are doing the loaf pan, grease it because corn meal won’t stick to the sides of the pan…  Now cover it up again with the dishcloth and GO AWAY FOR ANOTHER HOUR!   

About 45 minutes in going away, turn on the oven to 400 degrees.

After an hour has passed, pull the dishcloth off the bread - it should have doubled in size.  DON’T PUNCH IT!  Put it in the oven!  Leave it in there for 30-45 minutes. 

 I bake by smell remember?  When it smells oh my god I want to eat it right now delicious, open the oven door and thump the top of the bread with a knife.  Does it sound kind of hollow?  Pull it out. and set it on a cooling rack or if you don’t own one like me, put it on the top of the stove and walk away.  Just walk away.   Don’t cut into it yet!  Wait like 15 minutes.  

THEN cut into it - you won’t be burning your hands and mouth now. Put butter on that and eat the hell out of it.   Your friends will believe you are amazing and will be begging you to bake bread for them all the time.