Adventures in Homemade: Part Three

Today I am finally baking my bread that I said I would do a couple months ago. Weekend after weekend would come and go, and I just never had a good portion of my day to set aside for it. Well, today is finally that day. And I'm not talking about using a bread quick mix, or using a bread-making machine, I truly mean from scratch (flour, salt, sugar, shortening) and working the dough like a pioneer.

I had decided to go simple for my first time and do a classic white bread, and it started out pretty good. I got to use my dough hook in my mixer for the first time! I was just hoping for the best, since so many little things can go wrong and have a negative affect on the bread: not enough flour, too much flour, didn't rise enough, the water wasn't warm enough, didn't knead the dough enough, temperature was too cold during rising, temperature was too warm during rising.

My dough mixture was fairly 'doughy' and it was time to knead it. Funny enough, at that exact moment Andrew Bird's song "If I Needed You" was playing. Which, audibly, sounds like "If you kneaded me..." so it was like my bread had picked out the song just for me, haha!

Coming Soon: Deliciousness

I put the dough in the front room, since those face south and were the only ones with sunlight coming through. It looked a little silly, this shiny metal bowl sitting on the floor, but hey you gotta do what you gotta do. I figured the house was a little too cool, so if the dough was in sunlight it would be warm enough. After it rose in the big bowl, I then rolled it out and formed my two loaves. I put both of the bread pans back in the front room, on the windowsill, but by then the sunlight was moving and wasn't streaming in so much anymore. After another bit of rising it was time to bake.

Introduce part one of the rewards of bread-making: the lovely kitchen smell. The house still smells great. They baked for about 30 minutes, then it was time to cool. I set them on my wire racks for a while, then I couldn't wait any longer. I had to dig in!

I cut off a piece, and by all appearances it looked pretty okay; not too holey, not too dry, crust seemed fine. Then I took a bite and...

Oh. My. Goodness.

It was SO good. It was moist, soft, and still warm. I was grinning from ear to ear for the next half hour because I was just so happy that it turned out well! I exclaimed to Jarrod "I have made BREAD!"