Bread Making ( Lesson Three Of Four)

Hello once again, all you li’l ol’ bread-makers! Ready for lesson
three?

First, let’s review the basic recipe:

3 cups all-purpose flour 1 package yeast
1 1/4 cups water

Mix, knead, let rise, punch down, let rise, bake.

Hopefully you’ve tried a couple of loaves of this and are fairly
comfortable with the technique. Now, try this:

To the basic recipe, add one teaspoon of salt, 1 1/2 tablespoons of
sugar, 1 egg, and substitute milk for water. After the second rise,
just before you pop it in the oven, sprinkle some dill seed or sesame
seed on top.

An important note here is do NOT “guesstimate” the sugar and/or salt.
You can get away with this when making chili or squid, but NOT when
baking.

Now it’s starting to look and taste a little more like bread.

Note that home-made bread will NOT “keep” for longer than a day or so
before it becomes hard as a rock. This is normal, and is why our
forefathers had recipes for such neat stuff as bread pudding, bread
crumbs, etc.

It’s also interesting to note that the basic recipe makes a KILLER
pizza dough, if you’re into home-made pizza. I’ll leave the add-ons
as an exercise for the student, as no two people can ever agree on
what makes a good pizza filling.