Grandma's Bread

Its been a long time since I've made a regular loaf of bread, not to mention white bread. This is my grandma's recipe. She has made bread all her life. She is 89 and still making bread-but now with a mixer!

For 2 loaves:

1 T. yeast dissolved in 1/4 cup warm water

2 T. butter

2 tsp salt

2 cups water

2 T. honey

6 cups white flour

Add water, honey, salt, yeast mixture, butter, and 2 cups flour. Beat until well mixed. Add rest of flour and knead for 10 minutes. Rise until doubled. Rise in pans. Bake 325 for 30 minutes.

Notes to self:

I kept the dough a little more sticky by using 5 1/2 cups flour, not 6. Didn't knead for 10 minutes, only about 4 minutes. Also, baked it in a steam oven, just to experiment. Didn't seem to make a significant difference!

5 minute a day artisan #1

Most darling little loaf ever.

Dough is mixed and placed in fridge for future use.

I love the blisters in the crust-result of spraying it with water and baking in steam oven.

Dough was stiffer and easy to work with.

Perfect crunchy crust.

Crumb was chewy and moist, however; could be airier in my opinion.

From fridge to table in 1 hour. That would be the huge bonus.

Next trial: wetter dough to compare crumb.

Artisan bread in 5 minutes a day. A year or so ago, I tried this one but I wasn't happy about the results. However, it was in the early days of making artisan bread and I just memorized the recipe and didn't pay attention to the baking techniques!! Thankfully, my sister told me that hers turned out great. So, I figured I needed to give it another try and do it right!! By the way, this dandy little loaf went to a friend for her birthday. All I had to do was pull off a chunk of dough from the batch in the fridge and the bread was done an hour later...ready for delivery!!