For some reason, I find myself in a love hate relationship with bread. More of a hate, dislike. I mean, I think bread is OK. I like it and all, but I’m not in love with it.
I do however, find myself trying to master the art of baking it. I’ve tried the “Artisan bread in 5 minutes a day“. But honestly, I could never get that to come out right. I always ended up with a 10 inch wide 1.5 inch tall loaf of bread. It would be great for a large sandwich, but I don’t tend to make Dagwoods very often.
So I went back to basics, and just decided to make plain ol’ bread. I’ve been using this recipe, and it has been working out pretty well.
I did learn an important lesson today. Punch the dough.
See, I thought, if I let the dough rise for double the amount of time (2 hours) rather than letting it rise for an hour, punch it down, rise for another hour, and cook. I imagined having the fluffiest bread ever.
It didn’t work that way. Instead, it started to rise, got to a certain point, and then started to shrink again. Not exactly what I was going after. But the bread still turned out pretty good.
So here is the recipe that I’ve been using lately. I guess I can label it as “difficult to screw up.”
Cheers!