Amish White Bread Recipe and Pictures

So dsd is in her 2nd week of studying grains for the cooking class, and we attempted what some people would be horridly afraid of and yet happens to be a great passion of mine…homemade bread! Of course, as many of you know, my favorite “starter” recipe for bread is Amish White Bread, because of all the bread recipes I’ve tried (and I’ve tried more bread recipes than years I’ve spent on this earth-which would be almost 25 years for those who are counting), this recipe is the one almost foolproof recipe that I’ve found. It’s a very easy bread recipe, so I knew K could handle it for her first from-scratch (not out of a bread machine) bread.

Here’s the recipe:

• 2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
• 2/3 cup white sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons active dry yeast
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 6 cups bread flour

1. In a large bowl, dissolve the sugar in warm water, and then stir in yeast. Allow to proof until yeast resembles a creamy foam.
2. Mix salt and oil into the yeast. Mix in flour one cup at a time. Knead dough on a lightly floured surface until smooth. Place in a well oiled bowl, and turn dough to coat. Cover with a damp cloth. Allow to rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.
3. Punch dough down. Knead for a few minutes, and divide in half. Shape into loaves, and place into two well oiled 9×5 inch loaf pans. Allow to rise for 30 minutes, or until dough has risen 1 inch above pans.
4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 30 minutes.

  This makes a sweet bread, but it’s quite tasty, if you haven’t made homemade bread (or every time you’ve tried it’s been a flop) give this recipe a shot.

This is the yeast, sugar, and water immediately after mixing it together.

Ten to fifteen minutes later, here’s the same mixture, only foamy as the yeast has come alive and grown from feeding on the sugar.

Here’s Little Miss measuring out her flour for the dough.

Somehow, she managed to talk me into doing a little mixing with her…sneaky, I tell ya, sneaky!

I missed pictures of the kneading, as I had to do some major instruction in this area. I think she’s got it now, and in the meantime, here’s a pic of the dough covered in oil before it rose for the first time.

And here it sits with a warm damp towel over it while it begins to rise. Yes, the towel is clean, despite how the picture looks, lol.

Here’s how the dough looked after it’s first rising. K seemed amazed at how much it had grown!

This is the munchkin punching down the dough as instructed. (I think this was her favorite part, and one of my favorite pictures, hehe.)

And here are the fully baked loaves of bread. Okay so one is a bit larger than the other, but other than that, they are pretty nice looking, don’tcha think?

And here’s the “money shot” on one of the loaves.

And finally, K cutting her bread…remember this loaf was still warm while being cut, so it was a little harder to cut, but she did pretty good. That warm bread went pretty quickly around here…we saved the other loaf for her to take to her other family to show them how well she did.

What was YOUR first loaf of bread like?