Homemade White Bread

My hubby and I were talking yesterday about childhood memories. Both of us mentioned that our Moms would make homemade bread and that that was a really fond memory for both of us. We each loved coming home from school to the smell of freshly baked bread. After sharing this with each other, Topher looked at me expectantly. "So, do you ever want to make homemade

bread?" Ha! And here I had thought we were just reminiscing. Nope. He was trying to hint to me that I wasn't fulfilling my wifely duties of baking him fresh bread! So. This morning, I decided to remind him that I'm good for something. :) So I looked online and found this recipe that had some pretty good reviews. I had been so nervous about making homemade bread. "It's homemade! And it's bread! That means it uses yeast! " But, I soon realized I was worried for no reason. The recipe I used ended up being easy to put together and tasted great. I hope your

results are positive too!

Ingredients

2 pkg. Yeast

2 C. warm water

1/3 C. sugar

2 tsp. salt

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1/4 C. melted butter

6 1/2- 7 C. flour

Directions

In a large bowl dissolve yeast in the warm water. Add the sugar, salt, eggs, butter and 3 cups of flour. Beat this until smooth. Stir

in enough remaining flour (for me this was 3 1/2 more cups) to form a soft dough. You don't want the dough to be too sticky, or too tough. If it is sticking all over your fingers, add more flour. If there's a little bit of stick, that's just fine.

Now put the dough on a floured countertop. Begin to knead it. Really just pushing, punching, massaging, and folding it over itself. Knead for about 6-8 minutes, adding flour as you go to make it less sticky, and eventually getting the soft, smooth feel of a baby's bottom. :)

Grease a large bowl, place the dough inside, cover with a dish towel and place somewhere

warm to rise. I like to turn on the surface light on my microwave. You know, that light that shines on your stovetop from the bottom of your microwave? That warms the inside bottom of your microwave just enough to make it a warm place for happy rising to happen. :)

Let it rise for about 45 minutes to an hour. It just needs to double in size.

Once that has happened, punch it down, and separate it into two equal parts. Grease the bottom and sides of 2 loaf pans with butter, crisco or Pam, then cover and let rise for another 45 minutes to an hour.

Bake at 375 for 25-30 minutes, or until a very light golden brown. When it's done, remove it from the loaf pans and let it cool on a cooling rack. Take a stick of butter and slick the top of the loaves with it, that will give it a nice sheen and that's what Topher's mom always did and it made him happy. :)

Eat with butter and jam, turkey and cheese, or tomatoes

basil and mozzarella! We tried all of the above and they all tasted great!