Homemade bread

So, I'm 36 years old and have never made bread before. It's just so cheap at the store and so much work to make, it didn't appeal to me at all. Then, Jon's sister put a very simple recipe on her blog that I don't even have to knead by hand so I decided to try it. Hardly anything smells better than bread baking in the oven! I took it out a tiny bit too early so we toasted it and made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. It was so yummy. My kids kept saying, "Thank you mom for making this!" which doesn't happen enough around my house so that encouraged me to make it again. I made four loaves and we ate it in one weekend which is kind of a lot of bread to go through. The funny thing was I think I threw out my bread hook that came with my Bosch because I wasn't sure what it was and didn't think I'd ever use it. My mom bought me one which was so nice but then I realized I didn't have yeast or bread pans so I raided my mom's house and found some. Also, something I learned, bread has A LOT of flour in it, like 8 cups, WOW! I don't know if I'd call myself a homemade bread baker yet but we all did really enjoy it! Here's Becca's recipe.

2/3 cup honey or sugar

1/4 cup oil (rounded)

3 T. yeast

5 cups hot water

4 cups Flour

2 T. salt

Additional Flour (4-6 more Cups)

Put sugar, oil, and yeast in mixer (Bosch mixer you can do whole recipe, kitchen aide you can only fit 1/2 recipe). Add water and mix. Let sit 3 minutes to activate yeast. Add 4 cups flour and the salt (add salt last-it will kill yeast if you put it n first). Mix well to form a paste. Let raise 7 minutes. Add additional flour until dough pulls from sides of mixer pan (about 4-6 more cups). Mix it for about 4 minutes on high. Place bread in 4 greased loaf pans and set in warm oven (about 175-200 degrees) Let raise until dough is 1 inch over top of pan. This takes about 15-20 minutes. Without taking bread out, change temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 20 minutes.

A fun tip that I love is to spray your counter with Pam when you take dough out of mixer to divide. It makes the dough less sticky and easier to make it into really pretty bread shapes.

The Focacia bread is one of your dough loaves spread into a bottom of 9X13 pan. Dimple the dough, spread liberally with olive oil, sprinkle with dry Italian dressing (about 2/3 package), garlic salt, dill, Parmesan cheese, or whatever else you want or have on hand. Raise for about 10 minutes in warm oven and then bake for the 20 minutes.