My Homemade Bread

Just so you know, I am trying my best not to bake sweets.  We are cutting down on sweets :P  Though my week will not be complete when I don’t bake at least twice.  So I decided, why not bake our own bread as I often buy bread in store. 

I’ve been making this few times already and I highly recommend it.



Ingredients:

• 1 cup bread flour
  
• 2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
  
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
  
• 2 1/4 teaspoons dry yeast (1 packet)
  
• 1 cup warm water
  
• 1/4 cup sugar
  
• 1/3 cup milk
  
• 1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil

Procedure:

1. In a large mixing bowl, combine water, sugar, milk and dry yeast.  Mix and set aside, wait until bubble forms on top of the mixture (approx 10 minutes).
2. In separate bowl, combine bread flour, whole wheat flour and salt.  Mix well.
3. Once yeast mixture is ready, add vegetable/canola oil and stir.
4. Add the flour mixture and stir until dough starts to pull away from the bowl.
5. Place the dough on a lightly flour and clean surface and knead the dough for at least 10 minutes or until the dough becomes smooth.
6. Grease the mixing bowl with oil and place the dough in the bowl, flip once to cover the top with oil.  Cover the bowl with damp cloth and let it rise (double in size) for at least one hour.  
7. Grease 9-inch loaf pan with a little bit of oil and flour, set aside.  Take the dough out of the bowl and place on a clean lightly floured surface, then shape the dough the size of prepared loaf pan.
8. Loosely cover the loaf pan with lightly oil plastic wrap and let it rise again for at least 15 minutes.  The dough should rise about 1-inch above the pan.
9. Preheat oven to 350F.
10. Bake in center of oven for 40 minutes.  Roughly around 15 minutes or so, the top of the bread will turn brown.  If so, loosely cover the pan with aluminum foil.
11. Knock the bottom of the bread and it should sound hallow.  Let it cool completely on wire rack then slice.