The New Bread Lady

I came a long way in learning to make bread.  From relying on the bread machine 100% to just using it to knead dough to making bread from beginning to finish by hand.  OK.  You can call me bread lady now!!

In the beginning, there was no guarantee that my bread would be successful.  First loaf might be great but the second one a flop.  No idea why.  So I would buy a loaf of bread as backup just in case mine failed.

On my bread making quest, I even tried no knead breads - they were supposed to be easy - but somehow they just didn't come out right. For a while, I was pretty deflated (ya, like bad yeast) since I couldn't even handle simple no knead.  Heck!  A 5 year-old can make no-knead breads!!

But I got the hang of kneading dough over time.  All the practicing paid off!!  I actually enjoy kneading dough now believe it or not.  And slowly but surely, my bread started to look like real bread on a consistent basis.  I even made a darn good loaf yesterday!  It was tall, soft, fluffy and good looking.

See?  You like?  You like??

Another life lesson learned: Practice makes perfect.  I learned to shape it like a sandwich bread from thekitchn.com just yesterday.  Now, my bread is really coming together.

From memory, here's the Allrecipes.com honey whole wheat bread recipe (with minor adjustments from all the reviews I read):

1 1/8 cup warm water

1/4 cup honey

1 tsp salt

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup bread flour

2 TBL butter

1 1/2 tsp yeast

350° F for 25 minutes

The recipe is written for bread machine.  I just pretend that I'm the bread machine.  If the machine can make bread, so can I.