This recipe makes two loaves and is easily multiplied and adjusted for sweet breads or savory. Can be used for dinner rolls or sweet rolls or pizza crust too.
Ingredients
- 1 c. warm water
- 1 c. milk
- 1 egg
- 1 tbsp - 1/3 c. honey
- flour
- 1 t. yeast
- 1 t. salt
Instructions
Beat water, milk, egg, and honey.
Add flour until like a batter.
Mix yeast with a cup of flour and beat in.
Add flour until dough has a firm feel (do not add flour to reduce stickiness at this point or you will end up with a brick-o-bread) Bread being made in a loaf pan can be left softer than bread being used to make a free-form loaf or rolls which needs to hold it's shape.
Sprinkle salt over top, cover and let rest 20 minutes.
Knead until smooth and elastic (about 6 minutes in a mixer)
If a large batch, divide dough into enough bowls that it has room to double in size, cover and let rise for about 1 hour.
Grease pans with butter.
Punch down and either shape or let rise again (if there is more dough than can fit in your oven you can shape some and let some sit to be shaped later for staggered baking)
Rub top of shaped loaves with butter or brush with egg wash (1 egg /1 T water) or cover in some way so they do not dry out.
Let rise until double and bake.
To adjust:
regular loaf bread - bake 30 min. @350
dinner rolls or hotdog buns - bake 12 min. @400
hamburger buns - reduce honey / bake 15 min. @400
pizza crust - reduce honey / add garlic powder with flour / stretch on pan / bake 10 min. @ 450 / add toppings / bake 15- 20 min. @500
raisin bread - knead handful of raisins into dough / increase honey / roll into 8" wide rectangle / spread with butter, cinnamon, sucanat / roll up and pinch ends to keep goo inside / bake 45-60 min. @325
Variations:
additions at kneading time - seeds, nuts, dried fruit, dried tomato, chopped olives, herbs, sauteed onion or garlic, chopped hot peppers, shredded cheese, etc.
substitute some liquid with tomato sauce or other to flavor the dough.
