After all the discussions about fresh bread being baked by our illustrious cadre of chefs on this forum, I thought that I would give it a go while watching football today. Started out with Oklahoma versus Tulsa and that bored me. Since 2:30 PM I have been watching Alabama versus Texas A & M. The game went as I predicted. Sorry Tee.
Made up some dough this morning beginning around 10:00 AM. Very simple recipe:
6 cups bread flour
2 packages of yeast in 2 1/2 cups water
6 TBS splenda
3 TBS salt
6 TBS Butter, melted an then put into the flour
2 TBS olive oil
I made 3 loaves of bread: one white bread and 2 with Italian Seasoning mixed into the dough. One dough, I saved and froze for a future pizza.
Here are a few shots of the process.
The fourth dough was with Italian seasoning was in a separate bowl rising.
Here's a picture of the results:
I want to thank PZ as I followed a process he outlined for baking bread. I have a deep skillet from Lodge with a smaller skillet that is used both as a cover for the deep skillet and a small skillet by itself. After placing a little spray on oil on the inside of the skillet, I placed the dough inside after the second rise, covered the unit and placed it into a 450 degree oven where it sat for 30 minutes. After the 30 minutes, I removed the cover and baked for another 15 minutes and the result is shown. The bread came out better than I expected and very tasty with fresh melted butter on the slices. Yum. Could make a meal out of this without anything else.
One of the Italian seasoning loaves goes to my son tomorrow as he hosting the family dinner.
Have a nice evening,
Ed
