Happy Little Breadmaker!

Lately I’ve felt the need to learn a different set of “skillz”.  I’ve never really been able to make bread and I hear my friends talk about their “breadmaking days” and I’ve always felt a little bad cuz I haven’t been able to make a decent loaf of bread.  {Brent usually makes the bread and pizza dough in our home. He’s pretty good at it, too!}  Don’t get me wrong.. I like to cook and like to think I am pretty good at it… but bread baking, that’s a whole other story. 

Until now…

Well… last week, anyway.

Last week my sister was raving about some delicimous rolls that a friend of hers made… so of course I begged the recipe from her so I could try it out. *buwahaha* The recipe was super duper easy and for the first time EVER I did not kill the yeast.

I usually kill the yeast. Dead-O.

Even the instant dummy proof kind.

Here are a couple of snap shots of the rolls I made.  They smelled so delicious I barely let them cool before snitching one and eating it. *grin*

{We usually only eat wheat bread, but I took my wheat flour out of the fridge and it smelled like fridge and since flour usually tastes like it smells I opted for a white version.}

And then on Monday of this week I used the same roll recipe to make regular loaves of bread.  I just kneaded it longer and let it raise once , then punched it down and formed into loaves and let it raise in the pans on the counter.   I was reading in a bread baking book that it helps to form a nice crust if you bake it at 400 for the first 10 mins and then turn it down to 375 for the remaining 20-25 mins.  I let mine go a little long at 400 (oops!) and so the crust cooked just a little darker than I’d planned, BUT it still tasted DIVINE.. especially with some butter on it. Nom, nom…  Eventually I will figure out the right amount of dough to get equal size and well proportioned bread. Until then the big loaf will look like a runaway from the Hickory Kist deli… (they make some major huge loaves!)

I am so excited about this! Usually I kill the yeast and get a partial rise from the bread… or I do something else wrong and get a huge hollow section under the top crust… or it just tastes gross or is all dry and crumbly.  This bread has 3 eggs which gives it a nice moist and dense (but still light) texture. It’s YUMMMMY!

These were made without the use of an automatic breadmaker, too!  {I used to own one but it made crappy bread so I tossed it. Ok, call me picky. :P}  I used my Kitchen Aid Pro mixer to knead the dough {you should’ve heard the heavens open up and my wrists rejoicing} and let them rise at room temp.. nice and slow.

Hope your mouth is watering like mine.. I think I’ll go slice off a piece for lunch!  Back soon with some papercraft goodness!

Inky Smiles!

Updated 4/21/2011:  PS.  I did call my sister again and ask her if I could share the recipe… but I received a no answer… it’s a “top secret” family recipe from someone who won some awards with it.  I did find a recipe online that was very close.  Please see the comments in this post for the information.