White Bread: My introduction to powdered milk.

Alrighty. I decided to make what I had decided was one of the filler recipes in my crazy weekend of reclaiming my ego. Seriously. White bread had to be both easy and plain, leading me to not screw up another bread and feel better about my baking skills. Right?

I now scoff at my former assumption and sneer at my presumed snobbery. I really don't know what it is about this bread, but I absolutely devoured it practically the moment it was cool enough to eat. It was so amazingly light, fluffy and delicious that I couldn't believe it had such a misnomer as "White Bread." Clearly, this is the manna from the heavens that was sent to the Israelites during their journey through the desert.

Since this was from a crazy weekend of three different baking projects, I apparently forgot to actually use my camera. As a result, there are a grand total of two pictures. Oops...

As always, it's a pretty standard list of ingredients. Bread flour, salt, sugar, instant yeast and powdered milk for the dry ingredients. (Okay, the powdered milk isn't so standard, but I've used it again since then, and it's some pretty neat stuff, actually.) Egg, water and butter for the wet ingredients. Mix it all together, knead it up, and leave the lovely, soft dough to rise.

Since I had wheat bread turning out at the exact same time and only two loaf pans, I decided to use half the dough for a loaf and the other half for dinner rolls. I've gotten pretty good at guesstimating equal portions of dough out, so it was a nice exercise for me.

So I baked the rolls in a cake pan, and Bill and I managed to put off devouring them for long enough to take this picture. I kinda forgot to use the egg wash on them, so they're not shiny, but they were fine without. I don't know how to put it any other way, but this bread was just amazing. It was so milky and fluffy, and... YUM!

This recipe is a definite A+. Reinhart offers three different white bread recipes, so I'll probably try the other two at some point, following the joy I've received from this one.

White bread? Check.

Next? Light wheat bread.