Categories: Breads, Czech Family Recipes

Ingredients

• 3 cups water
• 2 packages yeast
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 3 teaspoons salt
• 3 tablespoons bacon drippings melted
• 8 cups better for bread flour

Directions

1. Tip: The secret to good breads and rolls is high heat; the longer and slower you bake, the more the bread will dry out. Also remember to use a high gluten flour for better elasticity. For cracked wheat, rye or whole wheat breads, use the same recipe as above EXCEPT cut the white flour by 2 cups; add your favorite dark flour (2 cups). You can add 2 teaspoons of caraway seed in addition to the dark flour for rye bread.

2. Heat water to luke warm, not hot. (Sometimes my mother would save and use the water from boiled potatoes; but don’t add salt to the dough if the potato water is salted.)

3. Stir in salt and bacon drippings. (if you don’t have bacon drippings, use vegetable oil, Crisco, lard or margarine.)

4. Begin adding flour; kneading well after each addition. It should take you about 15 minutes to work in all flour and knead until elastic.

5. Grease top of dough in bowl and place in a warm place to rise. When dough is double in size, knead until smooth. Let rise again.

6. When it is double; cut into 3 large loaves. Knead each and work until smooth. Place each piece of dough into a well greased bread pan. This amount will make a large dozen of hot rolls or two large loaves or 3 medium loaves. Let rise once more in baking pan.

7. Grease top of bread before baking with bacon grease.

8. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Bake for 25 minutes.

9. Remove from pans and brush with bacon grease again.

10. Cool, serve…if you can wait that long!

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