Categories: bread

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup warm water (about 110*)
• 1 package active dry yeast
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 2 cups warm milk (about 110*)
• 2 Tablespoons oil
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 6 to 6 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Directions

1. Pour water into a measuring cup; add yeast and 1 Tablespoon of the sugar and stir until dissolved. Let it stand in a warm place (80*) until light-colored and bubbly with a froth on top.

2. Pour the milk into a large bowl, and stir in oil, salt, the remaining 1T sugar, and the yeast mixture. Sprinkle in 3 cups of the flour, one cup at a time, stirring until the flour is evenly wet. Add 4th cup of flour, and, with a wooden spoon, beat until the dough is smooth and elastic. (It’ll take you about 5m, and your biceps will hate you. Rest when you get tired.) Mix the 5th cup of flour in and beat some more until the dough is stiff enough to pull up on the wooden spoon.

3. Measure out the sixth cup of flour. Sprinkle about 3/4ths of it out onto a large cutting board/wooden board/corner of your counter or table that you’ve cleaned thoroughly. Sprinkle a handful of the remaining flour over the dough and begin to knead it.

4. (To knead, reach over the ball of dough and grab the edge farthest from you; pull it towards you, but not firmly enough to tear the surface, and fold the dough in half. With the heel of your palm, gently roll the ball away from you to seal the fold and to roll it back into a ball and then flatten it out again. Then turn it a quarter turn and repeat, over and over and over again.)

5. You’ll want to knead the bread for at least five minutes, but the longer you spend kneading it, the lighter the bread will be; sometimes I’ll spend as much as 20m. Once you’re done, take a clean and dry large bowl, spray the bottom with Pam or other cooking spray, and put the dough in it. Then turn the dough over, so what was the bottom is now the top (that way, the top of the dough is lightly greased too). Cover with a damp kitchen towel and let it rise in a warm place (at least 80* but no more than about 110*). (What I often do is turn the oven on to warm for about 5m, then turn it off and leave the door cracked open for 5m, then put the dough bowl into it.)

6. Let rise for 45m-90m. It’ll roughly double in size. You know it’s ready when you can stab it with two stiff fingers and the dough huffs a little and the shape of your fingers stay. Once it’s ready, punch it down with your fist (this is so therapeutic) until it’s roughly its original size again, then turn it out onto a lightly floured board again. Knead it again, though you don’t have to knead it for more than a few minutes.

7. (At this point, if you want a lighter loaf, repeat the rising and punching down process; one afternoon when I had nothing better to do, I let the dough rise three times, but that didn’t really do anything except waste time. Two is enough.)

8. Once you’ve kneaded the dough again, shape it into a smooth oval. With a sharp knife, divide it in half. Form each half into a loaf by gently pulling the top surface to the underside to make the top smooth. Turn each loaf over and pinch the seam down the center, then turn the ends of the loaf under and pinch to seal them.

9. Put each shaped loaf, seam side down, in a greased and lightly floured 9×5 loaf pan. Cover with a damp towel, and let rise in a warm place until the loaf comes to just the top of the pan (again, usually about 45m).

10. Bake in a 375* oven (350* for glass pans) for 35 to 45 minutes or until loaves are nicely browned and sound hollow when tapped. Remove from oven. Let loaves cool in pans on a wire rack for 10m, then turn loaves onto rack to cool completely.

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