Bread & Butter

Today, something magical happened.

I made bread.

Real, yeasted, soft, delicious bread. Not gummy on the insides, not burnt on the outsides…just, amazing. Today, I broke my curse. Today, I became a woman.

Now, I know that all sounds very dramatic (though, let’s be honest - I’m a pretty dramatic person) however it makes me feel so good that I have FINALLY accomplished this. I guess I just had to take the time to commit to it. To follow a recipe…and find success.

Oh, and I also made butter…

BUTTER.

From. Scratch.

I was, once again, pretty amazed with myself. I may have laughed maniacally for about 10 minutes...I may have also made up songs about how awesome I am...my brother may have stood in the corner of the kitchen and wondered if he was adopted while all of this was happening...

But now, if you’ll excuse me, I have half a loaf of bread left to eat.

Success Bread
I took this recipe from here, but I halved it as I only had one packet of yeast left and I also didn’t want to waste a bunch of flour if it ended up being a fail…thankfully, it was amazing and I’ll be definitely using this recipe again and making 2 loaves next time so that I can give one away! Or...freeze it. Or...eat it.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup milk
1 tbsp butter
3/4 cup warm water
1 package active dry yeast
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tbsp salt
3 cups of unbleached bread flour

Directions:

Heat the milk and butter in a small saucepan over medium heat (I used the microwave and it worked just as well). Remove from heat when the butter is melted. Set aside to cool.

Pour 1/4 cup of the warm water into a small bowl. Slowly pour yeast into bowl while stirring. The constant stirring while adding the yeast will prevent the dry yeast from clumping. Set the bowl of yeast water aside for about 5 minutes.

In a large bowl, mix the sugar, salt and remaining 1/2 cup of warm water. Add the milk and butter mixture and mix. Pour the yeast water into the large bowl (It is important that the batter is warm, not boiling hot. Hot liquid, such as the milk you heated up, will kill the dry yeast and prevent the bread from rising).

Begin mixing in the flour, one cup at a time. By the 3rd cup of flour, the dough will begin to get stiff and it will be difficult to mix it with a spoon. Turn dough out onto a floured board and begin to knead the dough. Continue adding more flour and kneading the flour into the dough until the dough is smooth, not sticky.

Grease a large bowl with butter. Put the bread dough into the bowl and then turn the dough over so that the top of the dough is buttered. Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and let the dough rise at room temperature until double in size or about 1 hour.

Punch down dough. Turn it out onto a floured board and knead out all the bubbles for about 5 minutes. Divide the dough in half and form each half into a loaf by rolling the dough into a rectangle. Roll the dough up like a jellyroll. Pinch seam closed. Pinch and tuck edges under the loaf.

Set loaf in a buttered loaf pan, cover with kitchen towel, and allow to rise until double in size (about half an hour).


Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Bake bread for about 45 minutes or until golden brown. Remove bread from oven and turn out loaves onto a rack or a clean kitchen towel. Allow to cool before cutting.

Butter
I knew that homemade butter wasn’t impossible. In fact, one time when I was whipping cream, I wasn’t really paying attention and my sister jokingly asked if I was trying to make butter. I researched this and discovered that it’s true - if you whip cream for a very long time, it turns into butter. And I decided that because I had a fresh loaf of homemade bread and half a carton of whipping cream in my fridge, I might as well give it a try!

First, you need whipping cream. I had about a cup of it.

Second, you need a stand mixer. I’m still saving for one so I used a hand mixer.

Pour the whipping cream into a pretty big bowl. Mix on high for about 10 minutes.


After 10 minutes of mixing, the pale yellow butter should separate from the butter milk (this is when the maniacal laughing began). You might need a towel at this point as it gets a little splattery if your bowl is too small.


Once it’s mostly separated, scoop it out with a slotted spoon and put in a bowl. You can add salt at this point too, if you want salted butter.


ENJOY! And praise yourself for being a domestic goddess...I did.