white bread
In my experience letting bread have a little extra rise time has never done any harm. You do want to be sure to get the texture of the dough to elastic.
It doesn't matter a bit if you don't have loaf pans, you can set the breads to bake on a greased cookie sheet and they turn out fine. They just won't be exactly square shaped. I've seen and used other white bread recipes virtually identical to this one online, except that a different liquid is used in place of the 1/2 cup milk. This is the one my family had.
**The front loaf was made in a bread pan.**
5 1/2 to 6 1/2 C flour
3 tbsp sugar
2 1/2 tsp salt
1 package yeast
1 1/2 C warm water
1/2 C milk
2 tbsp margarine
2 loaf pans
food thermometer
1. Put two cups of flour, the sugar, salt, and yeast in a bowl. Carefully and thoroughly stir all the dry ingredients together.
2. Melt the margarine in the microwave. Heat the milk and water.
3. Add the liquids to the dry ingredients. Using a hand mixer beat at medium speed scraping the bowl for two minutes, or else stir with a spoon until the ingredients are well mixed. If preparing by hand, make sure to have flour ready to be added in the measuring cup. Having flour ready in the cup means that hands sticky with dough won't make messes.
4. Add one more cup flour and beat at high speed with a hand mixer for two more minutes, or by hand.
5. Knead the flour into the dough for twenty minutes. The dough will initially be sticky. To knead in flour, knuckle the dough to the bottom of the bowl, knuckling the dough in a circular pattern. Then lift up the dough, fold the floury bottom side in half with the flour inside, and then knuckle it to the bottom of the bowl again. The dough will fuse together working in the flour with each repeat. While doing this, the dough will change texture. It will stop being sticky. As more flour is added, the dough will continue to change texture. Continue to knead flour into the dough until the right texture is achieved. When a finger is pressed into the dough ball, and the dough is totally elastic, is not sticky, and does not rip in any way, the texture is ideal. Form the dough into a circular ball. Errors can be fixed by adding water or flour to get to the ideal texture.
6. Grease a bowl with butter or margarine. Put the dough ball into the bowl, making sure it is coated all the way. Cover the pan and set it in a warm place. On top of the oven with the oven set on low heat works well. Let the bread rise until doubled, about 1 hour.
7. Punch the dough down and place it on a wide floured surface. Smooth it into a ball and cut the dough into two even pieces. Leave a space between the pieces, cover, and leave to rise for another 20 minutes.
8. Roll each dough out, one at a time, on the flat floured surface. Spread the dough out to form a rectangle the width of a bread pan. Roll the dough up and seal with water. Repeat for the other dough ball. Place the dough in the greased bread pans and leave to rise once more. If no bread pans are available, simply leave the dough on a greased cookie sheet to rise. Let the dough rise for another hour in a warm place.
9. If desired, sprinkle bread seasonings and/or rub butter over the bread.
10. Preheat the oven to 400.
11. After final rise bake the bread in the oven for 30 minutes. The bread is done when it sounds hollow when knocked on.
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