Amish White Bread

Amish White Bread

Yields: 2 9x5 inch Loaves

Ingredients:

2 cups warm Distilled/Purified Water

2/3 cup Granulated Sugar

1.5 Tbsp active dry Yeast

1.5 tsp Salt

1/4 cup Vegetable Oil

6 cups Bread Flour

Instructions:

1. Heat the water to 110 degrees F.
2. Dissolve sugar in the warm water, then stir in the yeast. Allow it to sit until it makes a creamy foam.
3. Mix salt and oil into the yeast.
4. Mix flour in one cup at a time. 
5. Knead dough on a lightly floured surface until smooth. About 10 minutes.
6. Place dough in a bowl, cover it with a cloth, and allow it to sit somewhere warm (like on top of the heated oven) for an hour. 
7. After an hour, punch the dough back down. 
8. Divide the dough in half, shaping it into two loaves and placing it in the well greased pans.
9. Allow the dough to rise for another hour. My family recommended I let it go longer then the recipe called for; and I did, and it worked!
10. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. When it is done, you should be able to tap on it and it will sound hollow.

I actually got this recipe from allrecipes.com; Amish White Bread - All Recipes

For some reason, baking bread was the hardest thing I have ever tried. And I don't mean the bread machine type or the mixer type, but the good old-fashioned, rustic, put some muscle into it type. I had tried several recipes in the past, but I could never get the bread to rise! And if it did, my bread always ended up incredibly dense and yeasty and basically inedible. 

I came from a family that ate Wonderbread (they still do) and that works great for them. My husband, however, came from a family that had fresh, homemade bread all the time. I knew that he missed it and that he hasn't been able to find a bread out here in the Midwest that he likes. And so, I was determined to bake him bread. (Shouldn't every good wife make her husband homemade bread? lol)

I read everything about it that I could. (I am a researcher by nature, so I have to know everything about what I am doing. It's the curiosity factor, I think.) I learned that the oven temperature needs to be precise; if it is too cold the dough won't rise, if it is too hot it will kill the yeast and not rise. And so, I had to start out using an oven thermometer so that it was exactly the right temp.

I also pulled out a candy thermometer to measure the temperature of my water. Again, I had to make sure that I didn't kill the yeast. Another thing that can doom you from the start is to use tap water; the chlorine and other minerals in the tap water can also kill your yeast.

The end result? Perfection!