I'm so sorry for the sporadic posting over the past few weeks. I've hardly touched our computer in 2 weeks. But, good news is--we're back HOME! After 24 hours of planes and airports, this is a welcome place. Too bad we now have to deal with jet lag. Anyway, in an effort to get a recipe out to you, I'm using the last guest blog one of my friends gave me! April C. has lived in Asia some, is in the States now (but doing plenty of scratch cooking to make ends meet for their family of 4 while her husband is in school!), and will be back in Asia before too long. I'm excited to try her bread recipe for sure. Here you go...
This is the bread recipe I always make when we want homemade bread...trouble is, when I make it I like to make A LOT at one time so I can freeze a bunch and not have to make it again for awhile. So the recipe is huge and if you have a miniature dorm-room size Asian freezer, then it might not be great. But I guess you could always half it...or Thirds it. :) And, sorry, no pictures. That would probably help, but it takes us a while to get through 8 loaves of bread and I don't foresee making it again for awhile. Hope it makes sense anyways!
Basic Yeast Bread
6 cups warm water
3 T dry yeast
1 cup sugar
1 cup oil
1 tsp salt
12 cups flour (close to a 5 lb sack)
Mix together water, yeast, and sugar in a large container (if you're ghetto like me, you can use a storage tub!) and let sit until foamy (a few minutes).
Add oil and salt to above mixture and stir.
Add flour 3 cups at a time to mixture and stir after each addition. Pour dough out on a well-floured surface (it will be a bit sticky!) and knead until dough is smooth, adding more flour as needed.
Clean large container from before, add a couple tablespoons of oil in it, put dough back in container, flip over so all sides of dough are oiled. cover with cloth.
Let rise until double – about one hour.
Punch down dough. Cover and let rise until double again. About 45 minutes.
Grease loaf pans with shortening, or whatever you’d normally use for non-stick!
Punch dough down, then pinch off enough dough to fill each loaf pan half full. Don’t work the dough too much at this point. Cover the pans and let rise until double again. (I usually let the dough rise until it’s just barely peeking over the top of the pan).
Bake at 375. For my size loaf pans it takes about 20 minutes.
At this point, invite over all of your friends so they'll be impressed by the incredible homemade bread smell! hehe! :)
Notes from SB: April doesn't say it, but since this makes so much, you can freeze the unbaked dough. Instead of placing the dough in pans after it has risen, you'd just shape the dough and place it in ziplocks in the freezer. When you're ready to make it, take it out of the freezer, place in loaf pan and let thaw/rise until a good size to bake (a few hours). That way you have "fresh" bread without having to spend all the time kneading and rising. Like April DID say, just half or third the recipe if you don't want to make so much that you have to freeze it. I think she said it makes about 8 loaves.
This is the bread recipe I always make when we want homemade bread...trouble is, when I make it I like to make A LOT at one time so I can freeze a bunch and not have to make it again for awhile. So the recipe is huge and if you have a miniature dorm-room size Asian freezer, then it might not be great. But I guess you could always half it...or Thirds it. :) And, sorry, no pictures. That would probably help, but it takes us a while to get through 8 loaves of bread and I don't foresee making it again for awhile. Hope it makes sense anyways!
Basic Yeast Bread
6 cups warm water
3 T dry yeast
1 cup sugar
1 cup oil
1 tsp salt
12 cups flour (close to a 5 lb sack)
Mix together water, yeast, and sugar in a large container (if you're ghetto like me, you can use a storage tub!) and let sit until foamy (a few minutes).
Add oil and salt to above mixture and stir.
Add flour 3 cups at a time to mixture and stir after each addition. Pour dough out on a well-floured surface (it will be a bit sticky!) and knead until dough is smooth, adding more flour as needed.
Clean large container from before, add a couple tablespoons of oil in it, put dough back in container, flip over so all sides of dough are oiled. cover with cloth.
Let rise until double – about one hour.
Punch down dough. Cover and let rise until double again. About 45 minutes.
Grease loaf pans with shortening, or whatever you’d normally use for non-stick!
Punch dough down, then pinch off enough dough to fill each loaf pan half full. Don’t work the dough too much at this point. Cover the pans and let rise until double again. (I usually let the dough rise until it’s just barely peeking over the top of the pan).
Bake at 375. For my size loaf pans it takes about 20 minutes.
At this point, invite over all of your friends so they'll be impressed by the incredible homemade bread smell! hehe! :)
Notes from SB: April doesn't say it, but since this makes so much, you can freeze the unbaked dough. Instead of placing the dough in pans after it has risen, you'd just shape the dough and place it in ziplocks in the freezer. When you're ready to make it, take it out of the freezer, place in loaf pan and let thaw/rise until a good size to bake (a few hours). That way you have "fresh" bread without having to spend all the time kneading and rising. Like April DID say, just half or third the recipe if you don't want to make so much that you have to freeze it. I think she said it makes about 8 loaves.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing this. Homemade bread is something I really want to try. I need to get loaf pans!
ReplyDeleteI'm excited to try this recipe and even more excited about it making a lot and freezing the dough! I do have a silly question though, when you said that you shape the dough and put it into zip locks -- are you shaping it a little flat like when you put it into a bread pan or ball or? Just wondering what seemed to work best! Thanks for all the recipes you post!
ReplyDeleteSara--what I do when I freeze dough is shape it in an oblong blob that is a little smaller than the pans I plan to bake it in eventually. That way, when I take it out to thaw, I just put it in the pan to thaw and rise. It will fill the pan out as it rises and shape how it needs to. Oh, I forgot to mention that its really helpful to spray the inside of the ziplock with some oil or Pam (or coat a little on the dough) so that it doesn't stick to the bag (or you could wrap in Saran wrap too). Hope that helps! You girls let me know about this bread...I haven't gotten to try it yet!
ReplyDeleteSo I made this today. Big thanks to April for the recipe. I made a HALF of her recipe, just to make sure we liked it before making a big amount. Things I like: its a really light, fluffy bread--great consistency! Not as dense as homemade loaves of bread can sometimes be. I even used 1/3 of my flour as whole wheat. I was able to bake 2 8x4 inch loaves and 1 9x5 loaf with half the recipe, but it totally would have been enough for 4 8x4 loaves. I probably used closer to 8+ cups of flour including what I used to knead into the bread to get it smooth.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I will change--I think it needs more salt. That may just be a personal flavor thing. But I compared this to several other bread recipes I've made and most, if making this large of an amount, would probably have 3-5 tsp of salt at least. So I would probably start with 3 tsp (or 1 Tbs) next time I make this. Just plain, it tasted like it needed it to me for a fuller flavor, but I didn't really notice once there was some butter or peanut butter and jelly on it!
Often times when I make bread I like to add milk powder (a cup or so) in order to give some extra nutrition to the bread--you could totally do that with this I think.
Thanks, April!