Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Easier (and better, way better) than a bread machine

Hi.

It's snowing AGAIN. Normally, I wouldn't care, but here's the reason why this is not a normal snow: I HAVE TO SHOVEL IT. Brett is laid up with a lumbar strain, which sucks for him, and for me because he cannot do the normal things he does, which include shoveling. The kicker is that I already have a bad back thanks to a little something called spondylolisis (say that five times fast), which means that when I shovel it's so incredibly half-assed that it's barely worth doing. But if I don't shovel, then the dogs start peeing on the drive-way or side-walk or deck because they don't know the difference between a snow covered deck and a snow covered yard, but I do. Thus, I will half-assedly shovel some snow. . . later.

Now I will post a bread recipe that has a devout following in our house. I found it a book that Swistle recommended called The Tightwad Gazette. So here it is, and it's very easy and quite delicious and I will never buy store bread again . . .

5-6 cups all-purpose flour (you can substitute whole-wheat flour for 1 to 2 cups)
2 tablespoons dry yeast
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon salt
2 cups hot water
1 tablespoon sesame or poppy seeds

Mix 4 cups of the flour with the yeast, sugar and salt. Pour in hot water and beat 100 strokes, or 3 minutes with a mixer. Stir in the remaining flour until the dough is no longer sticky. Knead 8 minutes (I use the dough hook on my Kitchen Aid mixer and just let that roll around for about 8 minutes and it turns out fine). Place the dough in a greased bowl, and cover with a damp towel. Let rise 15 minutes (I have found that the rising time is more like an hour, but our house is incredibly dry, so the time may vary). Punch down (good fun). Divide into 2 pieces. Shape into 2 round loaves and place on a baking sheet. Cut an X 1/2 inch deep on top with a sharp knife. Brush with water and sprinkle with seeds. Place on the middle shelf of a cold oven. Place a cake pan of hot water on the lowest shelf. Heta the oven to 400 degrees. Bake 40-50 minutes until deep golden brown. YUM.

In other news, I'm going to the gyne tomorrow to discuss getting pregnant. Hopefully he'll reassure me that things will go alright and I should stop reading all the horrible things about Lupron that I find when I randomly google Lupron and pregnancy. God help me, I'm my own worst enemy.

5 comments:

Pickles and Dimes said...

Shoveling sucks. We are both so tired of it already that this morning we stared at the driveway and debated whether we NEEDED to shovel. Like, we could've easily made it to our cars so shoveling wasn't necessary, but Jason gets twitchy if the driveway isn't 100% clear, so he finally went out and did it. WIN. (plus, he owed me since I've shoveled twice all by myself)

That bread sounds divine! I don't have a nice mixer though, so that sucks.

LoriD said...

I'm so glad to have a recommendation for a good bread recipe. This may be the first thing I make in my new oven (when it arrives)!

Jess said...

Sorry about the snow! Keep us posted about the appointment.

Fiona Picklebottom said...

The bread sounds good. The shoveling does not.

Can't wait to hear what the GYN says.

Anonymous said...

I don't even have a bread machine so this recipe is perfect for me.

And I hate shoveling. It's like, no matter how much I shovel, THERE'S STILL MORE SNOW.