Homemade bread

What’s better than making homemade butter? Having it on homemade bread, of course!

I used a basic white bread recipe from good old Betty Crocker. First, I mixed up the ingredients: flour, sugar, salt, shortening, yeast, and water.

(I so love that that’s it for the ingredients! I have been reading labels a lot lately, trying to cut down on processed foods. For this bread, I went with white flour, but I would like to start making whole wheat bread. A bread machine may be in my future.)

Next step: kneading. The dough ball transforms from a sticky, lumpy mess to a wonderful, elastic plaything.

It doubled in size in about an hour. My favorite part: punching down the dough. I needed to get out my frustration from my push-ups fail earlier in the day!

I formed two loaves and let them rise again.

Then, they were ready for baking. Oh, the aroma!

We had some still warm fresh out of the oven.

We had some more with our Sunday dinner: crock pot chicken, brown rice, and broccoli.

The crock pot chicken recipe from 100 Days of Real Food is so simple. I love the tip for making chicken stock from the same site too. With the onion and drippings still in the crock pot from cooking dinner, throw the chicken bones in and top it with water. (You can add herbs and other vegetables as well.) Turn the crock pot back on and cook it for several hours or overnight. You get a large amount of virtually free chicken stock to store in the refrigerator for using in other recipes. The fat will rise to the top and solidify in the refrigerator, and you can scrape it off easily.

The great news: no preservatives or weird ingredients! It will spoil more quickly, though, of course. I usually freeze some for later use.

What to do with the leftover bread? French toast!

#29: 101 things in 1001 days. Bake bread from scratch again.