White Bread
October 18th, 2009
Not everyone loves homemade bread. That’s what I’ve heard anyway! And, there are those who have allergies and can’t have homemade bread. Our family falls into that category that loves homemade bread and we have no allergies. I enjoy hand kneading bread dough . . except for whole wheat bread. That dough has to be sticky and I can hardly stand to touch it. Oiling my hands before dealing with it helps but I’m always real happy to get that dough in the pan. Thank goodness the mixer can do almost all the work. But when making white bread, the mixer never touches it. My white bread is stirred and kneaded completely by hand.
For those who want to make homemade bread but haven’t, or have and had a less than exemplary result, it’s so worth it to try again til you get it right. Making bread is really quite simple and doesn’t take nearly as long as we often think. Start to finish usually takes less than 3 hours and about 2 hours and 45 minutes of that time is just letting the dough sit and rise or bake. It certainly doesn’t take 3 hours of your time, though you need to be around the house for those 3 hours. It’s a bit different with a bread machine, though I don’t use a bread machine.
This morning I made white bread. Since the recipe makes 2 loaves, I decided to add some extra ingredients in one loaf. I added chopped garlic, chopped rosemary, fresh black pepper and grated asiago cheese.
Adding the garlic, rosemary, cheese and pepper made the whole house smell like a yummy restaurant!
Chad and Vince both commented that it tasted like the bread from Great Harvest Bread in Owensboro where we loved getting different breads. Chad said “Think how good this would be if you’d added it to whole wheat bread!” And, I thought they would appreciate some white bread.
I’m not so sure about Chad’s combination. One slice has jelly, one slice has cheese, he added a fried egg and bacon . . maybe it’s the jelly/rosemary/garlic combination . . maybe not. He said it was delicious though!
