Homemade Bread

Hello :),

The winter definitely hit Chicago this week, it's super cold here. This cold season makes me want to drink lots of teas/coffee and specially eat sweets, all kinds: cakes, cupcakes, cookies, pies, breads and the list goes on. All that is delicious :). One of the things that I love to eat is bread, I cannot live without. We always have it at my house, and I make it from scratch.

Hence why, today I am sharing with you all my favorite homemade bread recipe. This recipe was passed on from my great grandmother to my grandmother, then my mother and unties, and me. It has a lot of history and love.

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1/2 cup of sugar
1 tsp of salt
1 cup of warm milk
2 tbsp unsalted butter softened
1 package of yest
Approximately 4 cups of flour, you may use 1 cup of whole wheat flour and the rest all purpose flour. Or either only whole wheat or all purpose flour.

Directions:

Using the bowl from your mixer, stir gently the eggs, sugar and salt.
Add the softened butter and warm milk and stir.
Add one 1 cup of whole wheat flour (or any other of your choice) and stir.
Finally add the yest and mix with the rest of the ingredients very gently.

Cover the bowl and let it rise until bubbles are formed.

After approximately two hours the formula should look like the picture below, which means is ready to knead down.

Attach the hook to your Kitchen Aid and start adding flour to the dough slowly. I use number 2 on my Kitchen Aid when I am making bread. If you have another bread machine I suggest you to follow the instructions for bread making. At this stage I add almost 3 cups of flour or enough so the dough doesn't stick to the bowl anymore. It's very important that you add the flour slowly so you have more control of how much you add. Too much flour will make the bread dry.

Once the dough is ready, put it in a loaf pan greased with butter and coated with flour. This recipe is enough to make 3 breads, or you may make 1 bread and 18 cinnamon rolls like I did this time. In my house we are all cinnamon rolls lovers, hence it is a must have every time I make bread. This recipe makes the cinnamon rolls very soft and light, pleasant to your mouth buds.

 Cover the dough and let it rise until it double the size. There is no time limit of bread rising. I found that it depends on the weather, in hot days it rises quickly, but cold days it takes quite some time to rise. You may need to be patience, you might need to wait around 4 hours to rise. If your house is warm will probably be less than that. Once the bread rose preheat the oven to 350F and cook it for about 15 min.

Test your cake with a kebab stick and if it comes clean the bread is ready. Do not overbake the bread as it will not taste the same, it will taste dry.
I love this bread, it tastes so great! It makes me think of my aunt's house smelling like freshly made bread and coffee. We always used to have tea time, which was coffee :), at 5:00 pm and had a good conversation. That's one of the things that make me miss my home the most: delicious sweets, coffee and great company = amazing combination!!!

Below is a picture of the cinnamon rolls, one word: divine!

Thanksgiving is coming let me know if you need any sweets for your family gathering.
Have a great rest of the week. Thanks!

Love,
Fabiana