Off-Campus Kitchen: Breaking Bread
When I was a kid, my favorite mornings began by waking up to the smell of my mother’s freshly baked homemade bread. My mom would cut off the puffy top part of the loaf for me and I’d scoop out the inside of the bread from the crust as though it were a bowl. Served with homemade cocoa, there’s nothing more comforting than warm bread fresh from the oven, especially in winter.
In theory, bread’s fairly easy to make. Apart from active yeast (which you can get at the Co-op Food Store) all you really need is flour and water. You can add salt and sugar to taste, or get fancy by adding milk, but at its core bread is really very simple. It’s cheap to make yourself and doesn’t require many special skills, but bragging that you bake your own bread is also impressive as hell.
Be warned — if you make some of the mistakes I made at first by trying to rush the rising process, the yeast won’t yield to your demands. The most difficult part of the bread preparation is properly treating and kneading the dough throughout the rising process so that the yeast doesn’t die on you and leave you with a brick of a loaf. As such, although the time you spend actively preparing the dough is short you’ll need to set aside a few hours when you’ll be near your kitchen ready to attend to the bread. While waiting for the dough to rise, do some homework or catch up on Downton Abbey in the next room.
Ingredients
1. In a mixing bowl, combine the yeast with the water and one cup of flour. Stir the dough. Cover bowl with a towel dampened in warm water and leave dough to rest for thirty minutes in a warm place. Seriously — make sure your baking space isn’t frigid, or the dough may not rise.
2. After you’ve let the dough rest, mix in the salt, sugar, oil and the rest of the flour. Use your hands to form dough into a rough ball. Dust a cutting board with flour and place the ball of dough atop it; knead the dough for eight minutes, adding flour as needed to keep dough from sticking. Check out this video to see how to do it. You’re done when the dough feels elastic and when a finger impression in the dough doesn’t rebound. Place the dough ball back in the bowl and recover with the moist towel.
3. Let the dough rise in a warm place for another hour, then knead it again. Grease your baking pan and place the dough inside in the rough shape of the loaf you want. Leave the bread to rise one more time, for about another hour or until it doubles in size. While the bread is on its final rise, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake the loaf for 50 minutes until the crust is golden brown. Be sure to allow enough space in the oven for the bread to continue to rise. When finished, let bread cool for 10 minutes or so before removing from the baking pan.