Making that dough

If I don't do but one thing right in the kitchen this year, I hope it's the bread!

And this one was a doozey. My biggest goal in the kitchen this year (besides canning) is to learn how to be a decent bread maker! I do not want to buy any bread for a whole year, that includes loaves, buns, rolls, etc... I'll let you know how that goes. lol

First off, do not let this picture fool you! I had the most trouble with this bread, I almost threw it all away. I'll explain.

So, back to THIS bread situation ---

I have made a few loaves of bread in the past few months, the first one was good but a little dense, the second was probably my best so far...but this batch was a struggle from the time I put the mixing bowl on the counter until I pulled the last loaf out of the oven.

#1 rule when making ANY recipe, read the entire recipe (especially the ingredients list). You see I thought I knew what I was doing because I have made bread before and they turned out edible, the amount of yeast in this specific recipe was the same as any other.

I started out by mixing all of my wet ingredients, I should have known here that something was not right because it was literally 6 cups of liquid, but I kept going and decided to put it in my stand mixer and it wasn't until I got to the part where I had to add the flour that I realized I was in over my head with the bread. 14 CUPS OF FLOUR ... now if you don't know anything about making bread, obviously like me, a typical 2 loaf recipe takes about 4-6 cups of flour.

At this point I was too far into the recipe to go back, everything was mixed so I began adding the flour. Now that made a huge chunk of dough!! I sat the dough in a glass bowl on my stove, like any other time for the first rise which is 1 hour. --Nothing happened--

My dough didn't rise, usually this means that the yeast added is inactive, however mine was active and I did all the proper steps even though I learned them halfway through. So, I let it sit for 2 hours instead of 1. --Nothing happened-- At this point I am a little frustrated, because that was a lot of ingredients to go to waste just for my dough not to rise. However, I turned to google and looked up ways to fix my problem. First, I sat my dough in a warmer place.

1 more hour goes by --Nothing happened--

Okay, well...maybe it isn't humid enough or warm enough. I decided to split my dough into two parts and place a tray of boiling water inside the stove.

You can tell my dough has a bit of a "shell" on it, the steam from the boiling water helped that problem...but still after another hour of waiting on my first rise --Nothing happened--

In case you aren't counting, we are 4 hours in at this point and it is almost 6pm.

I'm ready to give up with this batch and try again another day, I have one more trick to try and if it doesn't work then its trash. I activated some more yeast and added a 60:40 (flour:liquid) ratio to one of my dough balls and let it sit for 2 hours in the oven, for good measure, covered with a warm damp cloth. --FINALLY, it has risen-- and it is 8:30pm.

Now that my dough has finally risen the first time, I take it out and punch it down (the dough deserved it) and knead it a few times and split this half in half again to give me 2/4 total loaves...then let it rest until 9pm for its second rise! After this I put the two "newly activated" dough rolls into my bread pans for the 3rd rise, which I let rise for 1 hour instead of the usual 30 minutes for good measure. We are now 9 hours in to this breadmaking process. I'm just happy it is working at this point.

Finally, I baked my first 2 loaves for an hour in the oven, and they came out beautiful...but dense...but edible, and I didn't have to throw it away, so I call it a win.

As for my other large ball of dough, I put that bit*h in the fridge for the next day.

The next day, I did the same process for the other half...adding more yeast after I waited 2 hours for the dough to come to room temp. making our grand "working total" for these four loaves of bread --16 hours-- If you made it to this point with me, I applaud you because that was painful. Please read a little further for some words of encouragement. :)

**I accidently ended up making Sourdough bread for my last two loaves, due to the long amount of time the dough sat fermenting (over 24 hours before being baked) but this was huge win from this situation, because I want to make sourdough and this was unintentional...and the last two loaves turned out like your usual fluffy and light loaf!**

I am not posting about this bread struggle to discourage anyone from making bread. I am sharing because I am new at this, and if I can learn then you can learn with me! If you have been wanting to try this, DO IT, it is usually not this difficult. I have learned a lot from this breadmaking session, and I hope I taught you something too, the more you do it the better you get at it. Just for reference, making a loaf of bread should only take about 3 to 4 hours from start to finish (not 24) lol. If you want to know the recipe then comment below, I do have another recipe I will share that is similar and did not give me as much trouble.

"I am making sourdough bread, not sour bread dough."

Until our next bread making session...