We eat a lot of bread and have discovered that even bread is rationed at our local store and the WalMart up in Brady. I've decided to get "off the grid" to supply our bread needs, and this loaf of white bread is the first attempt. It came out pretty well, and we find that toasting it, either in the oven or in the toaster, really makes it great. It sucks up the butter and strawberry preserves almost as well as an English Muffin. The best benefit is that we know what ingredients are in it! Have you read the label on some of these store-bought breads? Holy Cow! Even the "healthy" ones have a list as long as your arm of stuff I've never even heard of and can't pronounce.

How was the aroma in your kitchen?

Have not heard bread called "light bread" since I was a kid. My grandmother served "light bread" at every meal. Looks great.

That does look good

Nothin better than fresh baked bread. Good job!

Looks good. Recipe?

+2

I gained two pounds just walking through the kitchen!

1 1/4 cup milk
4 teaspoons olive oil
3 cups bread or a/p flour (I used bread flour on this loaf)
4 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon yeast

Put all ingredients in a large bowl and stir to combine thoroughly
Cover with plastic wrap and put in a preheated oven at 170 degrees
After 15 minutes, turn the oven off, leaving the dough in to continue to rise
Once dough has doubled in size, remove from oven, punch down, place dough in a well greased 8 X 5 loaf pan; cover, and return to oven for about 30 minutes
As soon as the dough has risen just above the rim of the loaf pan, remove it and turn on the oven to 350 degrees
Paint the dough with milk, melted butter or egg wash (I used milk on this loaf); sprinkle on a bit of coarse salt
Once the oven has reached 350, place dough in oven and bake for 30 minutes, until golden brown and the internal temperature has reached190 degrees
Remove from oven and allow loaf to cool completely on a wire rack before slicing

Take some of that dough and pinch off some pieces about hush puppy size and deep fry, have some softened butter or mixture of honey and butter ready. Make more than you think you need, it will all disappear.

Yep, I grew on "light bread sandwiches;" we'd put a couple of slices of fresh tomato on the sliced bread, slather on some mayonnaise, lots of black pepper, and then eat 'em real fast before the 'mater softened the bread to the point where it began falling apart!

I'll just try that! And, I hear you on the volume issue!

Throw a handful of shredded cheese in with that dough mix/ Instance cheese sandwiches when it comes out of the oven.

That looks awesome. Appreciate the recipe

All right, dogcatcher! What I might do is throw in the cheese as you recommend and then pinch off blobs of dough and fry 'em. Fried cheese balls might be a real winner!

Once we added about a half cup of cheese with a similar mix and about the same with frozen blueberries that had been thawed. It was good out of the oven, but overnight it became a little soggy. Our recipe did not use milk, we use water.

Mountain Bread
6 Cups of all purpose Flour
2 Tablespoons of active dry yeast
1 Tablespoon of salt
1 Teaspoon of sugar
3 cups or maybe a little more of room temperature water

Notice there is no oil, just flour, yeast, salt, sugar and water.
Mix the yeast in room temperature water and the salt into the flour
Pour water into flour and stir with a spoon. This will be sloppy, stringy wet dough. It kind of looks like you are making drop biscuits. Cover this with a piece of wax paper and a cloth towel and let sit on the counter for 8-24 hours. I have used it in as little as 8 hours but it is better to wait.

When the mixture has set for at least 8 hours roll out into a greased cooking bowl or crock. The bread cooks better in a glass or ceramic dish and does not do well in a pan. I dust the mixture with flour lightly so I can roll it into the dish. It is very soft sticky dough and can not be picked up. Once in a baking dish I let it sit for about 1 hour before baking. Bake at 375 degrees for approximately 45 minutes or until golden brown.

looks great! Bread and rolls are a couple of things I have never really mastered. My mother in law and all my wife's aunts used to make the best yeast rolls and bread I have ever eaten. I tried to capture my MIL's and her aunt's recipe but I can NOT get it to come out the same, never sweet enough or they don't rise properly (maybe I am killing the yeast with not the right temp water or milk) ...

To add a bit of sweetness to your yeast rolls, try adding a full half-teaspoon more than the recipe calls for. To test that you haven't overheated the yeast, put it in a bowl with the amount of water called for in the recipe and allow it to "proof." If the yeast never blooms and starts to work, you've either gotten the water too warm or the yeast is no longer viable. While many recipes call for "warm water" it really isn't necessary. Room temperature water will work just fine, it will just take a bit longer for the yeast to begin blooming. You can even use cold water from the refrigerator; you just have to be more patient! Hot water or milk will kill it off; cold water will just slow it down. Another trick of the trade to produce really soft, fluffy rolls and bread is to add a teaspoon of powdered milk for each cup of flour called for in the recipe. One last thing, use bread flour instead of A/P flour. Bread flour has more gluten in it to be developed by the kneading process, and the gluten is the thing that traps the little carbon dioxide bubbles in the dough and causes it to rise more evenly and higher.

thanks ... my wife has tried for years to duplicate her mother and her aunt's recipes, but those were all given verbally by each of them from memory (so who knows what they really used, they just did it so often it was muscle memory reflex to them) ... I think the humidity, barometric pressure and how you are holding your mouth comes into play as well.

Yep! There's at least as much art as there is science to this whole baking process!

what I have come to find (even noticed it earlier today when I read this thread and it inspired me) is I wonder how often I have tried that the yeast was out of date on the package and it didn't work like it was supposed to.

Definitely need to "proof" your yeast Even if it's been in a jar in the fridge, all tightly sealed up, it has a definite shelf life. The sealed up foil paks have shelf life. Get out a tablespoon of what you have on hand, put it in a glass, pour some warm water over it, and let it sit. If, within 5 minutes, you don't see any indication of life, it's either dead or dying, so toss it out!

No yeast? Time to make beer bread!!!

Beer bread is what I usually make. Well plus cornbread and hushpuppies

I used almost the exact same recipe and added jalapeno strips and sharp cheddar. Turned out good.