Bread!

This is a relatively easy recipe for a loaf of excellent bread, made from scratch. Total work time is about half an hour, and any self-respecting Goon with a spoon should have the ingredients around. First the recipe, then some explanation of the parts I had no clue about the first time I made it. This makes a single, large loaf.

The whole trick to making bread is not killing the yeast. All you have to do to not kill the yeast is not expose it to any temperature higher degrees celcius. According to Peasant Revolt, you can go up 37C/86F safely without killing the yeast; also, refrigerator temperatures will slow rising a lot, but not stop it.

So make sure that everything that touches the yeast is at a comfortable to warm room temperature, and you’re golden.

Basic White Bread

1 tsp sugar
1/3 cup warm water
1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast [1]

Put the water in a large non-metallic bowl [2], add the sugar, and mix. Add the yeast, don’t mix it or stir it, and set aside for ten minutes, covered.

2/3 cup milk [3]
1 1/2 tbsp butter/margarine [4]
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup warm water

Mix the above together, and make sure that it’s at room temperature. Add it to the bowl with the yeast. 

At this point I always add something like rosemary, finely chopped, which takes the bread from good to awesome. Any herb will do–chives or dill give it a nice flavour–but rosemary is delicious and strong, while a lot of others like thyme don’t seem to add much. A half cup of finely minced rosemary is sufficient, but this is something you’ll have to adjust to taste.

Add a cup of flour and mix it with a whisk until smooth. Add another cup and mix it with a wooden spoon. Add the last 1 1/2 cups of flour and mix with your hands. I’ll discuss technique for this below. The dough is ready when it’s not sticky–which means that the dough still feels a bit tacky, but when you touch it, it doesn’t adhere to your hands. If it doesn’t feel tacky, you’ve put too much flour in–wet your hands and work it again to put some moisture back into it.

Knead the dough for at least ten minutes [5]. Put it in a lightly greased bowl. Let rise in a warm room temperature place until it’s doubled in volume–45 minutes for me, but you can let it go longer if it’s slow.

Take the dough out of the bowl and punch it down [6]. Shape it into something that will fit a loaf pan, and put it in a lightly greased loaf pan. Let it rise again until doubled in size, then bake at 400F on the lower oven rack for 25-30 minutes. Remove it from the pan immediately and let it cool on a wire rack [7].

If you want a soft crust, brush the top with melted butter; if you want a hard crust, spray it with water from a mister a couple times while it’s baking.