Daley's Dailey News
  

Our Daley Bread

The best bread I have made is easy to make and only takes a couple hours start to finish.  If you are using a mixer or a Cuisinart, use the Half recipe.  I have the large model of the Cuisinart and they advise never adding more than 2 cups of water.

 Ingredients                                                                           Half of the recipe

  1 Tbls salt                                                                           1/2 Tbls Salt

  2 Tbls sugar                                                                        1 Tbls Sugar

  3 Cups hot water                                                               1 1/2 Cups of hot water

  3 Cups flour - (white unbleached bread flour)                  1 1/2 Cups Flour

  2 Pkgs rapid rise yeast (1 tablespoon)                             1 Pkg. of yeast (1/2 tablespoon)

  1 Egg white                                                                         1 egg white

  1 Tsp water                                                                         Dash of water

  3 to 4 Cups of additional flour                                            1 1/2 cups of flour

Put sugar,  salt and water in a small bowl.  Use warm water (if it stings your finger it is to hot).  You should be able to leave your finger in the water for 15 seconds and know it's hot but not scalding.  Stir the water to dissolve the sugar and salt.  Then, take 3 cups of flour and place them in a bowl, add the yeast  and stir.  Then add the water mixture.  Stir well, the mixture should resemble pancake mix.

After well mixed add remaining flour a cup at a time until consistency is soft and velvety.  It is better to error on not enough flour than to much flour.  If you live in a locality with high humidity, use 2 3/4 cups of water instead of three, or add more flour.

After kneading for 5 minutes, put dough in a greased bowl and cover the dough with a dry towel.  Let the dough raise 1/2 hour.  The dough should double in size.  Knead or roll the dough to release the air.  Then shape the dough into loaves, put it in a pan and let rise 1/2 hour.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Put egg in a bowl and add a teaspoon of water,  mix well.  Then baste top of bread.  I often cut a design into the top of the bread.  I usually add sesame seeds to the top.

Place the bread in the oven and bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes.  Reduce the temperature to 375 degrees for an additional 20-30 minutes.  If the bread is golden brown and  when tapped on the bottom sounds hollow, it's done.  It is far better to error on the done side than the not done side!  The crust will get hard the longer you cook it.

If you want a soft bread crust, butter the top of the bread when it comes out of the oven.

You can make "monkey bread" out of this dough by melting butter and cutting the dough into small squares, then dip the squares into the butter and drop them into a pan.

Just as an after thought, yeast is a rip off in those packages.  They cost about $1.50 for 3.5 teaspoons.  Go to Sam's and buy yeast and you get 2 large packages and they last a year!  Keep the open one in the refrigerator.