Grandma VanDoren's White Bread (Part II)

Following my success with yeast, I was so curious about how bread made with Bread Flour might taste, that I had to sneak to the basement supermarket before running up to the fourth level of the mall to meet C. We made just in time to watch Iron Man. I digress.... (pretty good movie if you are feeling brainless too!)

Ok, this time, I decided to try making a white bread to see if the taste of chewy white might be more pronounced, even though it is homemade.

I got another recipe off Allrecipes. It seemed relatively simple and for sooth, it was pretty hassle-free. The only problem though, was that it required the gradual adding of flour after the initial proofing stage. This was waaaay harder than adding everything in at once and kneading all the kinks out. The resulting dough wasn't very smooth and if you pulled it in all directions, it could be pulled apart with some persuasion.

In a fit of pique, I decided to stop kneading and left the dough in a dark corner to reflect upon its mistakes (otherwise known as first fermentation).

After an hour, it seemed to have calmed down slightly and seemed more smooth instead of its earlier lumpy sulky self. I gave it another knead and tried to form a smooth looking log but that proved harder than I had thought.

In the end, I just dumped it into my pan, re-wrapped the saran wrap over it and left it there to rise a little more (although this wasnt stated in the recipe).

I wasn't too pleased with the results though, it tasted like the local baguettes available in our local ma & pa bakeries. But overall... I'm just superbly pleased that I can finally declare that bread making isn't something that's beyond me. Woot! Given enough time, I might even attempt Julia Child's Batard... loads of time...