Simple White Bread

 Welcome back to my kitchen! I hope that the aroma of the fresh-baked bread fills your house and arouses your senses as it does mine every time. Baking your own bread will reduce your food cost; for some it could relieve stress at the same time, especially if using the method of kneading and working the dough. There can be no question that homemade bread will taste so much better than most bread you can buy in the store. The long process of baking bread can be time-consuming and requires patience, but it is quite interesting. If you want to learn this process, you can go to these websites below that I followed when I first started baking my own bread.

http://www.baking911.com//
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/

If you are a beginner without the experience of baking I would prefer that you try some simple recipes of baking bread at home using a bread machine with a few changes. I will now share this technique with you to build your confidence because if the first time the loaf comes out wrong; it will kill any chances that you will want to try again.

Luckily for you, I have studied all the recipes that I could get my hands on and came up with my own. Just rest assured that whatever recipes that I post in my blog have been tested by me and can be revised to any size to fit your lifestyle. You can double or triple the ingredients to make it work for whatever events that you are hosting.

A simple loaf of bread is flour, water, and yeast and a few changes to enhance the taste of bread. If you use a bread machine, your job is more than halfway done. This is the simple and foolproof recipe for white sandwich bread; I hope you will enjoy it.

Ingredients:
1 cup of warm water (105°)
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons milk powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups of bread flour (maybe 3 more tablespoons of flour is needed)
2 teaspoons active dry yeast

Instructions:
Place the ingredients in your bread pan machine in the order listed above or you can follow the instructions from your bread machine manual. If you want to bake the loaf in the machine, then select the white bread button; press start.

After practicing a few times, I don't like to bake my loaf in the bread machine because it looks conventional rather than homemade. If you want to bake your loaf in the oven, then select the dough cycle and press start. The bread machine will do the mixing, kneading and the first rising for you in the machine or placing the dough in an oily bowl. Cover with a damp dish-towel and lest it rise in a warm place for 1 or 2 hours or when the dough is double in size as the picture below shows

.

Then punch down the dough with your fist to remove any air bubbles.

Brush a 10x6x3 inch loaf pan with oil and lightly dust your hands with flour and shape the dough into a long rectangle the same width as the loaf pan. Now fold each end of the long dough rectangle underneath so that the dough length will be exactly the same length as the loaf pan. Place the dough into the prepared pan seam side down.

Cover with a damp dish towel like earlier and let the dough rise in a warm place for another 30 minutes, or until the dough has reached the top of the loaf pan. To achieve a deep golden brown top, brush with egg wash

Preheat the oven to 400° and bake the loaf in the oven for 30 minutes. To test that the loaf is done, first remove the loaf. It should sound hollow when you tap on the bottom with your knuckles. Turn the bread out onto a wire rack to cool.

I experimented with several different variations of this white bread recipe to convert it into wheat bread, potato bread, sauerkraut bread, pumpkin bread and sweet dinner rolls etc... The options are endless.

Just try baking bread one time -- we all KNEAD to try something new!