First Loaves of Bread

After being inspired by some other women's bread making abilities, I decided to make my first homemade bread. Well, how it really happened is we ran out of bread and I didn't have the car or the desire to go to the store, and I thought this would be a good time to give a try at making bread. So about 11 am I set out to give it a go. After reading the directions for making Honey Whole Wheat Bread! Yum! in my handy dandy Betty Crocker Cook Book, I realized it's a similar process to making pizza dough which I do about every week. So, it turned out to be easier than I excepted. There is truly something wonderful about making homemade bread. First, it smells wonderful even when it's just sitting on the counter rising. It feels peaceful, and made me feel that this is how life should be. I realized while kneading the dough for about 10 minutes (plenty of time to contemplate life), that bread making is cool. I hope one day I will be able to say to lil' b, "Can you go make some bread?" and she will be able to. In our day and age when everything is so processed and package, to me, it seems so precious to be able to pass something simple like bread making onto my kids. Well, first step- make your own bread.

I actually skipped a step accidentally. I was suppose to knead, rise for 60 mins, then roll out, shape, then rise again for 35 mins. Well, I read the directions wrong and skipped from kneading to shape and rise, so I just let it rise for 1 1/2 hrs. Here it is rising.

And , even with my mistake, it turned out. It was delicious. I am truly amazed how good it turned out. I will definitely completely follow the directions the next time, because it will make it even better and yummier!!Here is my egg salad sandwich I ate afterwards, with HOMEMADE BREAD. I couldn't believe it. It was euphoric. I felt like a proud puffed up mama hen. I throughly enjoyed the process and will be making lots more homemade bread, in fact I'm about to right now.