Bread making ( lesson three of four)

4 Servings

Ingredients

Quantity Ingredient
Bread lesson 3

Directions

Hello once again, all you li'l ol' bread-makers! Ready for lesson three?

First, let's review the basic recipe: 3 cups all-purpose flour 1 package yeast 1¼ cups water

Mix, knead, let rise, punch down, let rise, bake.

Hopefully you've tried a couple of loaves of this and are fairly comfortable with the technique. Now, try this: To the basic recipe, add one teaspoon of salt, 1 ½ tablespoons of sugar, 1 egg, and substitute milk for water. After the second rise, just before you pop it in the oven, sprinkle some dill seed or sesame seed on top.

An important note here is do NOT "guesstimate" the sugar and/or salt.

You can get away with this when making chili or squid, but NOT when baking.

Now it's starting to look and taste a little more like bread.

Note that home-made bread will NOT "keep" for longer than a day or so before it becomes hard as a rock. This is normal, and is why our forefathers had recipes for such neat stuff as bread pudding, bread crumbs, etc.

It's also interesting to note that the basic recipe makes a KILLER pizza dough, if you're into home-made pizza. I'll leave the add-ons as an exercise for the student, as no two people can ever agree on what makes a good pizza filling.

You shouldn't have had any problems so far, but here's a troubleshooting chart for ya':

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