Works for Me Wednesday--Kitchen Edition

Our Daily Bread



And yes, I do mean daily! Since I can't have sodium, bread with baking soda is a big no-no, so I make my own yeast bread almost everyday. Yes, that is a full-size loaf like you would buy in the grocery store. This is Texas, people, we don't mess around with those little loaf pans...we do everything BIG!!! (Notice how it doesn't even fit on the cutting board? And yes, it will last about one day around here!)

Okay, so we make lots of variations of this bread, some lower fat, some sweeter, some with garlic or Mrs. Dash to go with an Italian meal, but this is the basic, oh-so-easy recipe, and coincidentally, the one we made today:

You will need:

1 cup of hot tap water
2 Tablespoons of dry yeast
2 Tablespoons of granulated sugar
3/4 cup of sweetened whipping cream
3/4 cup of milk (you can use 1 1/2 cups of milk if you don't want the fat and calories of the whipping cream...but seriously...why wouldn't you???)
5 cups of bread flour
Butter-Flavored Cooking Spray

Instructions:
Pre-heat your oven to 170 degrees.

Put 1 cup of hot tap water (about 110-120 degrees) in a 2-cup measure.
Add 2 Tablespoons of dry yeast and 2 Tablespoons of sugar and set aside. (the sugar "feeds" the yeast and gets it going.)

Put 3/4 cup sweetened baker's whipping cream and 3/4 cup milk into your mixer's bowl and (if it's not metal) put the bowl in your microwave for 45 seconds on high. You want both the bowl and the milk to be lukewarm. If your bowl is metal, you'll have to figure out another way to warm it up a little.

Attach the mixing bowl to your stand mixer, add 2 cups bread flour to the milk, and mix with the wire wisk on low speed.

Right about now, you should be noticing that your 1 cup of yeast mixture is now frothy, and growing before your eyes. Once it doubles to 2 cups, add it to the milk/flour mixture, and continue to beat on low speed.

Add 3 more cups of bread flour, one cup at a time, to the mixture. Once the mixture gets too thick for your poor wire wisk, switch to the dough hook. (This may be once you've added ALL of the flour, or only after a cup or two.) Continue to mix with the dough hook, increasing speed until the dough forms a nice ball around the hook. It should still be quite sticky though, not smooth and elastic like other breads that require kneeding. (NO KNEEDING!!! Didn't I tell you this was easy?)

Pour the sticky batter into a pan that has been sprayed with butter-flavored cooking spray, (I prefer the Crisco brand myself.) and press evenly into the bottom of the loaf pan. (This recipe will make 2 of those smaller "meatloaf" sized pans for those of you who don't have a giant, Texas-Sized pan. If you don't want two loaves, just cut the recipe in half.)

Spray the top of the dough with the butter-flavored cooking spray, and put in your 170 degree oven...BUT TURN THE OVEN OFF NOW!!!

Let the bread rise for about 30 minutes until it has risen nicely above the top of the pan. (Use the oven window and light for this.) DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN!! Just turn the oven on to 375 degrees and bake your bread for 20-25 minutes.

When the bread is nicely browned on top, and sounds hollow when you thump it, it is done! Let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes or so and then on a wire rack for another 10 minutes before cutting it.

YUM!!!

For more WFMW tips, go visit Rocks in My Dryer!