bake bread from scratch

Now that I’ve got a stove with double ovens, I see bread baking in my future. I don’t know if Jeff has packed my cookbooks or not, but I can always pick up my bread book when I bring him back to KS. I’m also hoping he packed my bread machine so I can at least have some fresh baked box-mix bread in the meantime. Now, what type of bread should I bake first?

I made some Naan bread. It didn’t look, or taste the way I remember Naan bread being, but nonetheless it still tasted ok. I think that I might use this recipe for making a pizza crust.

After making the bread, it inspired me to want to make different kinds of bread. I never thought about making different kinds of bread.

Mmmm, just typing this makes me think of freshly baked bread. My Grandma used to bake bread daily. I got her recipe.

I’ve always wanted a bread machine, but everyone has talked me out of it. Lately, I’ve been eating quite a bit of bread.

I made some Honey Whole Wheat using this recipe and it turned out very well even though I’m neither a hillbilly nor a housewife ;)

My mother used to bake bread for me when I was little. I still love it. Someday I’ll make her recipe, once I have a mixer. Until then, I’ve been sticking to the no-knead variety.

and I do bake bread occassionally. But overall, it takes too much time away from other things I’d rather be doing, like playing the piano, soaking in the hot tub, and planning vacations.

I used to bake bread all the time. Once in a while I still do, but my wife came up with a modification of the recipe that’s better than mine, so she makes her version most of the time now.

I bake bread all the time. My own hamburger buns, French dip rolls, loaves…Sometimes I knead by hand, sometimes I use the Kitchenaid to knead. Sometimes I use the bread machine dough cycle, letting it do the mixing and kneading, but taking the dough out when it’s time for forming and baking. Very occasionally I let the machine do it all.

And lately I’ve been making a really good bread that has only four ingredients and doesn’t require kneading. It uses very little yeast and has a crackly chewy crust. The kids say it tastes “like scones on the outside and like English muffins on the inside” (and they mean American style scones, which are fried; no idea what English muffins are called in other parts).

A search for “no knead bread” will turn up the full recipe. I think it’s 3 cups flour, 1.5 cups water, 1 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp yeast. You need a cast-iron pan or other heavy oven-proof pan with a lid.

The fact that it’s not kneaded wouldn’t matter if it weren’t one of the best basic breads I’d ever tasted.

is near Godliness. The yeasty rising stage fills your house with anticipation and by the time it’s cooked I can barely hold myself back from tearing into it and smothering the steaming sumptious foodstuff with creamery butter… Mmmm…

but my kids have grown up and moved out,so I usually only make fresh bread when we’re having company. It’s just too much for just me and my husband. But it is diffently worth doing. My daughter is coming home from college next week, and I plan on making her favorite, banana bread!