I have been wanting to bake bread from scratch for a very long time. However, the time that it actually takes to make the bread has always been the inhibiting factor. I have not had 3-4 consecutive hours that I could sit at home and bake bread without having to go somewhere or NOT stay up until 2 in the morning baking bread. So, on the second snow day, I decided that I would try and find the ingredients in my cabinets to make something...ANYTHING, and MUCH to my surprise, I had all the ingredients to make a White Bread. So, I called my mom and she emailed me the recipe that she uses and I basically, after much hesitation and even more encouragement from others, went to town on my bread! (Now, I'm excited because I don't actually now how it's going to turn out because I am writing this as it is sitting in a bowl with a towel over it and rising...so we'll see if my enthusiasm is still existent AFTER the bread has been baked, cooled, and tasted!)
***after the baking is complete!
Here is the bread once everything was mixed together - RIGHT before I started kneeding it...
The bread in the bowl, waiting to rise (You can even see where I poked it TWICE just to make sure it was ready!)
This is the bread punched out and rolled up into two pans (one was a little deformed...next time I'll fix that) :)
Halfway through the rising process
Finished with rising
After spraying Butter-flavored Cooking Spray on the top so it browned nicely, here is the result!
AND...here is me having a sandwich! YUM!
After my successful, first time, making bread...I decided that I would follow in the footsteps of my pastor's wife and try my hand at cinnamon rolls. Now, I'm not a HUGE fan of cinnamon rolls, Hubby is, so I whipped up a batch. When it was time to make the icing, I realized I did not have cream cheese, so I created a simple sugar/milk/vanilla mixture that had a similar consistency and sweetness (without the hint of tart with the cream cheese) and really feel like it couldn't have turned out any better as a pulled-together-last-minute-something-being-used-as-a-substitute kind of thing!
All in all, it was a VERY productive day on my part, and I have a blog to show for it as well!
