Baking bread is slowly becoming something that I absolutely adore doing… I love the uncertainty of it, you never know if your loaf is going to turn out right or not! Recently me and Katie baked up a couple loaves of simple, white bread, after doing her feature for “My Friends and Food” on the old blog (that feature will definitely continue over here, too)! The loaves turned out surprisingly beautiful (“rustic”, but beautiful) and I will definitely be braiding the majority of my loaves of bread from now on…I’m all about the visuals.

The recipe we used came from:

http://www.robertsplace.ca/recipes/homemadebread.htm

as I did not trust the bread recipe book I had been using previously after the bagel incident. This recipe is a real beauty! The dough rose incredibly, the bread got nice and golden, and the finished product was flavorful, light and fluffy. Oh, and it made a ton of bread, too (3 gigantic loaves).

Here’s the gigantic hunk of dough this recipe created, ready to be kneaded to death into a smooth, elastic ball. Katie and I ended up having to cut this puppy in half in order to work it out.

Here are our babies under the hot stove top light, mid-rise session (by the end of it the dough was exploding out of the bowls).

Once the dough was completely risen (it took about 2 1/2 hours), we punched it down and braided it into three pretty loaves. Okay, they weren’t that pretty at this point, but things changed after a short trip into the oven! Also, we did a milk wash instead of an egg wash for these loaves, because I’ve found that the egg washes don’t turn out so well in my oven and tend to create a “burnt” look more than a “crisp, golden” look.

In no time, our babes were out of the oven and looking gorgeous! We did two at once, and then the third loaf on it’s own afterwards.

The third loaf was baked in a longer, slimmer pan, and turned out the best looking. But these little fat loaves were really delicious. See? Beautiful!

Nothing beats home-made bread, and it’s difficult to go back to the store-bought “light as air” version after making my own couple of loaves!

I hope you all give baking bread a shot! It’s so rewarding.

xoxo

Mariel