Baking Bread and then Breaking Bread

From the City...

 A tiny kitchen that is, amazingly, still big enough for bread making.  Note the pink kitchen aid which did all the bread making dirty work.  And yes, that is an apron with naked cowboys on it.    

 The dough.  Before it's first rising.  One of the best tips in this recipe is to make sure that your yeast, sugar and water mixture is good and frothy before you add the flour to it.  

 I turned my oven for 20 seconds at about 350 degrees and then turned the oven off and stuck the dough in for about an hour and voila, it came out like this.  At least doubled in size.

 Divided into two loaves and put back in the oven for another 30 minutes to rise again.  This pic is after the second rising.  Egg wash and sprinkled with sesame seeds.  

Baked for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.  

For dinner we had slabs of bread with raspberry jam and farm eggs with goat cheese, 

it was like my dream evening.  

Here is the actual recipe.  

It's really great and super foolproof.  

My changes are as follows (which I did the second time around):

only 2 tbsp sugar 

(I wanted sandwich bread but I would add the full amount of sugar if you plan on making raisin bread or sticky buns or something incredibly delicious like that)

2 cups whole wheat flour and 4 cups white bread flour 

(the original recipe is a bit too cakey but would be PERFECT for french toast)

I also found the loaves way too big.  

For a special occasion, sure, have the extra large slabs but on a day to day, we like our bread regular sized and toaster friendly, because of this, I made three loaves as opposed to two. 

Cheat, use your kitchen aid. 

Proof your yeast, water and sugar in the bowl of your mixer.  Add your oil and salt and mix, with the dough hook, on low for a couple of minutes.  Then add your flour a cup at a time.  Crank it up to medium and let it knead for 5 minutes.  

happy breadmaking!

-ab