Basic White Bread

There are some recipes I think everyone should know.  How to make a couple loaves of white bread is one of them.  We make all of our own bread at home.

It is a basic food, a simple recipe, very easy to do.

I’ve had a couple requests from others asking that I teach them how to make it.  People have the idea that making bread is a difficult thing.  It isn’t!  The only hard part about making bread is waiting to eat it!

Gather your supplies! Bread flour, yeast, sugar, salt, oil, bowl, tbsp, tsp

Ingredients:

• 5 cups bread flour
• 2 cups warm water
• 2 tbsp yeast
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 2 tbsp oil
• 1-2 tsp salt

That’s it! That’s all you need!

Instructions:

• Combine 2 cups of bread flour with two cups warm water, sugar, yeast, oil, and salt. (I always do it in that order.  I don’t know if it makes a difference or not.)
• Let this set for 8 minutes to create a sponge.

Why is the first stage called a sponge? ‘Cause it looks all…ya know…spongy….and stuff.

• Add the remaining 3 cups of flour
• You can use a fork starting out until the dough is a little drier, then use your hands, then drop it onto the counter to knead it.  Use a little flour on the counter if it is sticky.
• Knead it well and form a ball and place the ball back in the bowl.

Your dough should not be sticky when you’re done with it. Add a little flour to the counter as needed while you knead.

• Wet a towel with warm water and ring it out to just damp and cover your bowl with it loosely.
• Place it in a warm place and leave it set to rise an hour.

Dough should double in size. Mine was a little higher, but there was a dry spot on the towel and the dough stuck to it when I pulled it off. No worries though!

• Punch the dough down, pull it out of the bowl, and beat on it some more– flour the counter if neccessary.
• Knead it back into a ball as best you can and cut it in half.

The cut will become the bottom of each loaf

• Place each half into non-stick or greased bread pans
• Cover them again with a damp towel and leave them to rise 45 minutes to an hour.

Oven ready! I always leave them to set 45 minutes and then preheat the oven and pop them in when the oven is ready.

• At the 45 minute mark, or toward the end of an hour, preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
• Bake for 20- 25 minutes
• Dump the bread from the pans onto a heat resistance surface to cool.

I had some technical difficulties that caused the bread to fall flat, but that’s o.k.  Trust me, it will eat just the same!

Salt controls the rate of rise, so if you find that your dough is rising too fast, growing too large, increase the salt from 1 tsp to 2.  If you use 2 tsp and find that your dough isn’t rising as well as you’d like, try 1 tsp or somewhere in between.

If your sponge doesn’t look so spongy I wouldn’t worry about it much.  I’ve had very spongy sponges and not so spongy sponges and at the end of the day the dough still rose, still smelled as good in the oven, and still tasted the same!

Because homemade bread doesn’t have a bunch of preservatives, it doesn’t keep that fresh chewy texture for long, unlike store bought that can sit on a counter for two weeks and still seem “fresh”.  It will only retain that freshness for a day or two.  It is edible for around a week, but not as enjoyable so you have a couple options IF you even have any bread left after 24 hours!  We do because homemade bread is the norm here so we are used to it and take it for granted.

You can toast it before eating OR you can cut it up into cubes and leave it spread on the counter to dry to make homemade stuffing which, by the way, is incredible!