Skill a Month: Learn to Bake Bread
In January, I channeled my love for the smell of homemade bread into learning how to actually, you know...bake homemade bread. Here's what I learned along the way: Baking bread is ridiculously easy...IF you have the equipment. And by equipment, I mean a stand mixer with dough hook. I think that's why I've been intimidated in the past. Luckily Santa gave me one this Christmas. Everything takes 3 hours. They don't tell you this. The recipe might say it takes 40 "active" minutes with 2.5 hours "additional time" that includes a double rise. And you'll miss this and think the recipe takes 40 minutes. No matter what recipe I made, they all took about 3 hours. I found Sundays a good time to do this because I usually had a chunk of time in the middle of the day. There are TWO kinds of yeast! I've only ever known the kind in the packet (active dry yeast). But most recipes call for instant yeast. This is d...