It's Bread in the Oven: A recipe for pure goodness

I have bread in the oven & boy does it smell delicious! Since I haven't bought a bread machine quite yet, I was desperately wanting some of that homemade, fulfilling bread that could go with my Baked Rigatone. Solution- Oven baked bread. For those of you wondering how I made this wonder dough, read a little further.

Here is what you will need:
- Bread Pan
- Mixing Bowl/Mixing Spoon
- 1 cup of warm water
- 1/4 cup of milk
- 5 teaspoons of sugar
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 5 teaspoons of butter
- 1 pack of dry yeast
- 3 cups of flour
- non stick cooking spray



Add in one cup of warm water to the mixing bowl, followed by 1 pack of dry yeast. (Dry yeast can be purchased from almost every grocery store. I live in Austin, Texas and purchased a pack of 3 at HEB for $0.80!)

Mix in the yeast until you don't see anymore clumps. It should look like the picture below.

Now melt your butter and pour it into the bowl along with the sugar (5 teaspoons), salt (1 teaspoon), and milk (1/4 cup). Stir that up so that there aren't any clumps and it turns into a smooth mixture.

Then add your 3 cups of flour. You can add them either all at once and stir, or stir cup by cup. Either way, the recipe turns out the same.

Now here comes the fun part! Time to knead the dough! Coat your counter-space with a thin layer of flour and also be sure to coat your hands. It'll stick quite a bit within the first 2-3 minutes of kneading, but by adding flour time after time, it'll become a thicker, harder durability.

Knead for about 10 minutes.

Mold your dough into a ball and set it inside a clean mixing bowl and cover the top with a towel. Allow to rise for 50 minutes.

WOW! Look at that rise. (The littles insisted that I had dropped in some liquid magic. haha)

Remove the dough from the bowl and flatten/punch/mold it into a rectangular-ish shape. Take your bread pan and use that as a measuring tool to create the width of the dough. See picture below.

Then roll the dough up from the part nearest you working your way closer to the pan. Fold the ends under to create that smoothness around the entire top/sides of the dough. You don't want any cracks appearing on the top section.

Spray the bread pan with non-stick cooking spray, and use a paper towel to spread the oil evenly inside the pan. I find this helps to smooth out where the oil clumped up. Set the dough inside the bread pan, cover with a towel, and let set for 1 hour.

After an hour, your dough should have raised to about a little under twice the size.

Now set your oven for 400 degrees fahrenheit and bake your loaf for 30 minutes. Continuously check up on it every 5 minutes or so to make sure that the top of the bread isn't burning or getting too dark. The darker it is, the crispier it will be. (I learned this the hard way. haha)

Voilà! It smells incredible, looks beautiful, and tastes delicious. hahah. You won't ever get a beautiful homemade loaf from the store like this one! Share it with your friends and family, have baked bread at your convenience and what's greater is that it is homemade, delicious, and costs so much less than the average $3-$4 loaves you would otherwise be buying at the grocery store. No more store bought bread: I'm going homemade!

XOXO,

Noemi

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