Time to Bake Bread

  I've been wanting to bake bread again. It's been a while. Grocery store bread is too easy. But when I added "bread" to my grocery list for tomorrow I thought "No, I don't want that. I want homemade bread". So this morning I set out to make a couple of loaves of one of my favorites, a Simple White Bread on JennyCanCook.com.

I doubled the recipe - who wants to go to all the  work for one loaf? Two isn't any harder.

And the result was wonderful. Delicate white bread, perfectly browned on the outside and with  that incomparable yeasty taste and smell of homemade.

 Tom and I have each had a slice now that it's cooled down. Well, I had two (but don't tell him).

 I used two rounded teaspoons of yeast. I do like proofing it in the milk and sugar mixture, slightly warmed in the microwave. It's a good way to test your yeast - not to mention activate it. The milky mix will begin to get a little foamy as he yeast begins to work.

 I'd say the dough more than doubled in one hour (above). One rise of 35 minutes is not enough in my opinion.  I always let bread dough rise twice, generally for an hour each time.

 After I knocked the dough down and kneaded it a few times, I divided it into  two loaf pans, lightly sprayed with olive oil. Here they are after a second hour of rising.

 And here are the finished loaves after 30 minutes in a 375° oven.

 This recipe is about as simple as can be and produces a wonderful loaf of white bread. Forget the grocery stuff!