Baking Bread

Sometime during the "great hunkering down" I decided it would be fun to bake bread. A bunch of other folks decided the same thing as the ingredients were not available at the grocery store. By the time I arrived, there was one bag of flour and no yeast. I bought the last bag of flour, with the idea that I would find yeast somewhere else. I checked two other stores in town, as well as online. Yeast is not available. Then, a phone call intervened. In talking with my out-of-state friends, I mentioned  my bread dilemma and on Monday I received a surprise package containing one pound of yeast. WOW!

Now that I had the ingredients, I made the bread but not without another dilemma. I called up YouTube and other online recipes and discovered modern bread is made using a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment. I don't have a dough hook attachment. That's when I got out my old Betty Crocker Cookbook that I received as a shower present way too many years ago. NONE of the recipes call for a dough hook. I don't think dough hooks for home use had been invented when this cookbook was written. (Keeping those old books can come in handy).

I followed the recipe for crusty white bread and made two yummy loaves. The house smells so good....and only one loaf is left. There's nothing like warm bread straight from the oven.

Thank you Bob and Lisa for sending me the yeast. Thank you Betty Crocker for the old fashioned recipe. Thank you dear husband, for enjoying the bread. I think I'll make focaccia next. (PS--In case you don't have a dough hook, 8 minutes of electric mixing with a dough hook is equivalent to 10-12 minutes of hand kneading.)