Basic White Bread

This is a very basic bread recipe on to which you can build that I adapted from one of my baking books. I make bread a few times a week to save money and to savor the wonderful smells and flavors of homemade bread. Even though there appears to be a lot of steps, once you do this a few times, it seems like the prep work goes very quickly. The longest part of making bread is the wait time, and there's tons of ways to spend that time, right? My girls are very helpful now and love to do the kneading process, which is just fine with me. To make this as easy as possible, I've posted several pictures that my good helper, GR, and I took; the recipe follows.

Fig. A. Freshly baked and sliced Basic White Bread.

Fig. B. Resting Dough

Fig. C. Risen Dough (on a pre-floured surface)


Fig. D. Punching down risen dough

Fig. E. Folding dough into into loaf shape. The bottom seam has been pinched together, and I'm folding up the ends. This loaf actually could have been rolled even tighter.

Fig. F. Resting dough in loaf pans.

Fig. G. Risen dough in loaf pans.

Fig. H. Slashing floured tops of risen dough.

Fig. I. Fresh out of the oven. The loaf on the right has a little less flour because I took it out of the pan to tap the bottom and then put it back in for the picture. Shucks. But notice how they are so puffy and have risen above the pans.

Basic White Bread

Ingredients:

Makes two loaves
Two large bowls
In each bowl add:
5 1/2 cups bread flour or unbleached all-purpose flour
2 Tbs. salt (Can adjust to 1 Tbs. for less salt, if desired)
1 packet Rapid Rise yeast packet
2 cups cold tap water

Directions:

In each bowl put in the dry ingredients. Carefully whisk until well mixed. Add the water and mix as well as you can with a large spoon. On a lightly floured surface, pour out the contents of each bowl one at a time, unless you have a helper, then you can use two floured surfaces simultaneously. Knead the dough for ten minutes, adding a little flour at a time, if the dough gets sticky. Thoroughly wash each bowl, and put the dough back in them (Fig. B). Cover each bowl with a damp, clean dish towel. Let it rest and double in size for two hours (Fig. C). Lightly grease two loaf pans. You can do this by either spraying with Pam or by taking a paper towel with a bit of margarine on it and rub it around the inside of the pans. Remove towels and gently punch down dough in the middle and a couple of times on the sides (Fig. D). Again, pull out each bowl's dough onto floured surfaces and flatten and shape to look like somewhat rectangular shapes, roughly the shape of your loaf pans but a little bigger. Roll up the dough from the short end, somewhat snugly. Pinch the seam together and fold under the ends (Fig. E). Now you'll have a loaf shape again in this position. Rest for another hour to double in size with the towels again in place (Figs. F and G). Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Remove the towels and sprinkle and gently spread flour on the top of each loaf. With a sharp knife, gently cut a slash down the center about an inch deep of each loaf (Fig. H). Bake for 15 minutes, then turn down heat to 400 degrees and continue baking for another 25 minutes. They will have a nice golden color on top when done (Fig. I). When the bread is removed from the pans, tap the bottoms to hear a somewhat hollow sound. Let cool out of the pans on a cooling rack. Added tip: If you are baking more than one loaf at a time, bake for 30 minutes instead of 25, and then remove them from the pans, place upside down directly on grills, and bake for another 5 minutes. After a few minutes of resting, even when very warm, the bread can be sliced for a wonderful treat (Fig. A). We toast ours, use it for sandwiches, snack on it, dunk it in split pea soup, and have it for dessert. This recipe makes two loaves, which feeds five hungry vegans for about three days.