Sunday Bread Baking

Love Hot Bread right from the oven, so delicious with a big smear of butter!  It's Sunday, I have been battling hay fever pretty much all weekend.  We didn't go to church this morning, neither one of us was feeling up to it.  So I dosed myself with allergy medication and sat there in a stupor for a bit.  Looking at my tablet, I was surfing for a good sandwich bread recipe and came across this one.  Well, you can see the results above!  The recipe is on food.com at this link : Quick Yeast Bread  NOTE:  I will swap out the water and oil for milk and butter next go around for more flavor.

Ingredients:

Yield:

  2   2

2

loaves

Units: US | Metric

• 5 cups white all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons yeast (or 2 x 7g pkts)
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups warm-hot water ( I would substitute hot milk next time for a richer taste, just my personal preference)
• 1/4 cup cooking oil (and I will swap this out for real butter instead)

Directions:

1. 1
   Put 4 cups of the flour, yeast, sugar and salt into large bowl.
2. 2
   Pour in hot water and oil and mix until combined- it will be sticky.
3. 3
   Add the remaining flour in increments until dough is no longer sticky.
4. 4
   Knead for about 5 minutes until dough is elastic and smooth.
5. 5
   Place dough back into bowl and cover with a damp teatowel and let it rise until double its size- about 1/2 hour.
6. 6
   Punch it down and divide dough into two pieces.
7. 7
   Roll pieces long enough to fill two well oiled loaf pans and leave to rise until dough has reached the rim of the pan.
8. 8
   Bake at 400F for 40 minutes.
9. 9
   Rub hot breads with water and wrap in a teatowel to'sweat' to soften the crust.

Read more: http://www.food.com/recipe/quick-yeast-bread-89164#ixzz1uoZ9m2us

And concurrent to making those two lovely loaves of bread, I decided to use up the rest of the dough that my husband made yesterday for our pizza and made Focaccia.  

The kids all know the pizza dough recipe, for those that don't....here you go.

61/2 cups of unbleached flour

1 1/2 TBLS kosher salt

1 1/2 TBLS Yeast

3 Cups warm, not hot water

Mix all together in a BIG bowl, cover with saran wrap and let rise for 2 hours (don't knead, just stir until moistened)

Take half that dough and roll out onto a parchment lined jelly roll pan (use a baking dish if you don't have one)...you will want to flour your hands and the dough liberally as it is a very sticky dough.  Let rise while the oven is warming to 475 F.  

Top as you wish, for this one, I caramelized 1/2 of a large onion coarsely chopped, in 2 tbls butter and 2 tbls olive oil with a pinch of salt.

Cool the onions and then top your focaccia, sprinkle with crushed rosemary and oregano, cracked pepper and kosher salt.

bake 18-20 minutes or until done.

We like to dip our focaccia in olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  It also makes amazing sandwiches!

I hope you enjoy these recipes as much as we do!