I made bread!

That's right. I did.

I woke up Saturday morning around 6 am (way earlier than I wanted) & thought, I think I'll make some bread. I used this recipe from Annie Eats. However, I couldn't find my dry milk I had bought so I just poured in a bit of my skim milk. I also only had Splenda blend instead of sugar so I used a little of that & then squirted in some honey too.

I also don't have one of those cool stand mixers with the paddles like most bread bakers have so I mixed my dough using my spoonula. I figured if the pioneer women didn't use a mixer surly I could mix mine with a spoon too. Let me tell you, that is hard work. Finally, I got to the fun/exciting part...the kneading. I kneaded the dough for about 10 min having to add a lot more flour. I had dough stuck to all parts of my hands & flour was everywhere, but it was fun. I plopped the ball into a bowl to rise. All recipes say that the bread will double in size at this point & they are not lying. It got HUGE. I started searching the cabinets for extra pans that I might could bake the bread in. Then as I was about to transfer it back to my cutting board for shaping & a bit more kneading, it started shrinking. Apparently it is supposed to do this but I got a little concerned but thought I'm going to see this through.

After shaping it, I realized it would fit in my bread pan & I wouldn't need the extra pan I had found. I covered the dough again to let it proof but after about 20 min it was growing exponentially again so I decided to go ahead & get it in the oven. After baking it for about 15 min I wanted to see how it was coming & the monster must have continued to grow once in the oven because the top of the bread was actually touching the top coils. So I quickly pulled it out of the over, lowered the rack, & stuck it back in without burning myself (which is actually a miracle with my history).

After baking for about an hour, I let it cool. And, let me just say, I think I did pretty good. It's not bad at all. It is enormous but quite good.

My parents & grandmother was in town this weekend so I took some of it over to my aunts & they tried it & everyone seemed to think it was pretty good. So, huh, I guess I'm a baker now. :)