Plain Ol’ Bread

It’s just plain ol’ bread. Hence the title.

  • Ingre­di­ents!
  • 2 cups warm water (105−115 degrees)
  • 1 tbsp. active dry yeast
  • 1⁄4 cup hon­ey or sugar
  • 2 tsp. salt
  • 2 tbsp. oil (canola or vegetable)
  • 4 — 5 1⁄2 cups all-pur­pose flour

Prepare the Dough

In your mix­er bowl, add the yeast, water and a pinch of the sug­ar or hon­ey to proof the yeast. Rest for 5–10 min­utes until foam­ing and bubbly.

Add remain­ing sug­ar or hon­ey, salt, oil, and 3 cups of flour. Mix to combine.

Add anoth­er cup of flour and mix to com­bine. With the mix­er run­ning add more flour, ½ cup at a time, until the dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl. The dough should be smooth and elas­tic, and slight­ly stick to a clean fin­ger, but not be over­ly sticky. Add a lit­tle more flour, if needed.

Knead the Dough

Mix the dough for 4–5 min­utes on medi­um speed (or knead with your hands on a light­ly floured sur­face, for 5–8 minutes).

First Rise

Grease a large bowl with oil or cook­ing spray and place the dough inside, turn­ing to coat. Cov­er with a dish tow­el or plas­tic wrap and allow to rise in a warm place until dou­bled in size, about 1 ½ hours.

Option:

To speed up the first rise, pre­heat oven to 180°. Plac­ing the in a well greased bowl, turn­ing it once to grease the dough all over. Cov­er bowl with plas­tic wrap. Mov­ing quick­ly, turn oven off and place bowl into the oven, leav­ing the oven door slight­ly cracked open. Allow to rise until dou­bled. Then remove, punch down and shape into loaves.

Spray two 9×5″ bread pans gen­er­ous­ly with cook­ing spray on all sides. 

Punch the dough down well to remove air bub­bles. Divide into two equal por­tions. Shape each ball into long logs and place into greased loaf pans.

Second Rise

Spray two pieces of plas­tic wrap with cook­ing spray and lay them gen­tly over the pans. Allow dough to rise again for about 45 min­utes to one hour, or until risen about 1 inch above the loaf pans. Gen­tly remov­ing covering.

Bake

Pre­heat oven to 350 F. Bake bread for about 30–33 min­utes, or until gold­en brown on top. Give the top of a loaf a gen­tle tap; it should sound hollow.
Invert the loaves onto a wire cool­ing rack. Brush the tops with but­ter and allow to cool for at least 10 min­utes before slicing.