Food Obsession: Homemade Bread

Okay, so it's carb overload. Can you blame me?

I've probably made about 6 loaves since I took these pictures...I must say that I've learned a bit more about kneading and folding my dough so they look a bit more...bread like! But for a first round, these don't look too bad. The one on the right was actually done in a small square pan, because I only have one loaf pan. Figures.

Not too shabby! I found this basic white sandwich bread recipe and it makes two loaves. So I'm not just making one at at time, which is a time saver.

Toast your slices, slap on a bit of butter, and YUMMO. I plan on making some whole wheat or any other fancy flavors I might be craving.

Now that I've made a few loaves, I find that you really must do these 4 things:
1) Dissolve your sugar in the water that you'll put your yeast in (this recipe has you putting in the sugar at a different time). I have no idea why this helps or makes a difference, but it does.
2) Knead your dough for at least 5 minutes. The dough needs to be super taut, bounces at your touch and is super smooth. If your dough isn't like this after 5 minutes, keep going! I'm positive that this helps with the rising of your dough. And it's kinda like a mini work out...Kinda.
3) Practice at folding your dough. There's actually some kind of art to folding the dough and getting it to look like a loaf of bread. Clearly, the ones I made here are a bit rustic. Folding your bread like you would a letter (in 3rds), and then pinching the ends and the last fold together helps to keep it in shape and it will prevent your loaf of bread from having an overall odd shape.
4) "Slash" your dough loaves right before you put them in the oven (if you want a bread-top kinda look). I slashed these loaves when I put them in their pans to rise for a second time, and they look like they have scars on their tops. Whoops.

Making my own bread (and homemade bagels!) has been super fun, and it's exciting being able to make mistakes and fix them the next time to get even better results. As long as it's edible, who's gonna care if it's out of shape? No one really, but it's still a good feeling to know you've made a nice looking loaf of bread :)

Tell me, what are you wanting to make homemade??

~Sacha