Baking Bread

Jim doesn't like bread machine bread. It's a texture thing. He does like bread kneaded by hand and baked in a real bread pan in the oven. Particularly white and rye bread, not whole wheat. So 39 years later I am back to making bread the same way I first made it. I am trying to eliminate commercial mass-produced bakery products from our diet. It's not important here, as they don't use HFCS and frequently use palm oil instead of hydrogenated oils in the commercial baked goods, but in the US it will matter.

Baking bread is a process I enjoy. We get delicious bread instead of the rather questionable tasting loaves here. So yesterday I baked bread again. I made a double batch, enough to make two loaves. We don't eat bread rapidly enough to require baking 2 loaves at once, but I wanted to try making hamburger and hot dog buns. I let the buns rise a second time in the bowl so they wouldn't need to be baked until after the loaf was done baking. I have a small oven, you see.

The bread turned out perfectly. The hamburger buns appear to be perfect, as well; I will confirm this after eating one as part of my lunch. The hot dog buns are a bit too short and fat. I will know how to shape them better next time. All in all it was simple and I plan to make more buns in the future.

I still haven't gotten around to trying to make English muffins.