Bread Baking 101

I would consider myself a competent cook. If I walking into your kitchen right now, I could come up with something using only the ingredients in your cabinet without using a recipe. I think that is a good standard to measure myself against. I wouldn't say I'm the most creative cook, or the best cook, and I don't have a very wide variety of things that I make. I can make a few things very well I try to use a lot of fresh ingredients. There is one thing that I have struggled with for years and that's bread. I have gone through seasons when I tried different recipes, tried various methods and such, but I didn't master it.... until now.

Jonjenek's mother is a down-home country gal from the sticks. One of the first things I learned about her was that she made her own bread, so I put it on my list to get her best recipe and take it home with me for my portfolio of things I've mastered.

After I had the opportunity to try some of her rolls, I was even more anxious to get the secret family recipe and made a point to ask about that very thing. We went over one Sunday morning and she had worship music playing throughout the house, was in a pretty yellow Sunday dress and an apron, and had a giant bowl of bread rising on the counter. It was like a vision of my future. That day I asked about the bread.

She laughed when I hesitantly requested the recipe, and this is what she told me. "I use five ingredients; flour, salt, sugar, oil, and yeast. I start with a quart of water and a whisk. I have this big spoon that I use to measure. For two packets of yeast, I use 2 spoons of salt and two spoons of sugar and stir that up." I think she adds her oil at that point too, but I'm not sure. I wait until the yeast proofs before I add four spoons of oil. "Then I start adding flour. When it's too hard to stir I use a spoon and add more flour. When that's too hard to stir, I dump it on the counter and knead it for ten minutes. That's it."

So I went home, chose a big spoon and tried it, and voila. Bread. Came up like magic.

You may need to know a little bit about yeast and rise time, but if you are interested in more details, I can answer those questions in the comments. I have tried this over and over, adjusting the salt to sugar ratio and tried butter, variants of the oil measurement, etc. It just keeps working. I believe I've mastered it; it's just not the best I once believed it to be.

So thank you, Eileen, for the gift that keeps on giving! xoxoxo

I added pictures to my New Mexico trip post. I can't figure out how to make them bigger, but you get the jist of the dance party anyway.