FOOOOOD!

I like food. Always have. Even before I became 6 months pregnant and able to eat a small barn in a reasonable amount of time. Yum foood! So I recently found a recipe for Cinnamon Swirl Bread. One problem. I have NEVER made anything with yeast. I helped my mom with cinnamon rolls occasionally when I was little. By occasionally, I mean like twice. Haha. And by "help" I mean I looked under the towel to see if they rose. Mom was also not a fan of yeast. So I decided that before I did somethign silly like jump into fancy shmancy yeast breads, I should probably try my hand at making a simple yeast bread. I found a nice recipe online that also mentioned how to add wheat flour rather than white and other changes that can be made to the basic recipe to make other types of bread. But between decision time and the actual making of bread...I lost it (the recipe that is.) So I spent some time on allrecipes.com. After looking through a ton of recipes with directions that sounded like this "Put all ingredients in a bread machine. Turn on. Drink a glass of wine. Laugh at those people out there that don't own bread machines." I don't have a bread machine. Bravely I was making this old school. With my trusty Kitchenaid stand mixer. Then I found a recipe I that had real directions and sounded simple and delicious! YAY!!

Honey White Bread
stolen from allrecipes.com here

You would be proud, I actually followed the given recipe quite well. Almost exactly. Good for me!
This was my beginning yeast mixture. It was bubbling and doing a little dance so I was pretty sure it was active and happy to be helping my quest for homemade bread.

This was the part where I got REALLY NERVOUS!! I added flour and it wasn't getting any thicker so I kept adding flour. I was pretty sure I'd been mixing it for entirely too long and had murdered my poor little yeasty friends. It did eventually get dough like, but the recipe was too big for my little Kitchenaid. So I ended up kneading it my hand. Way to go me.

Rise, dough, rise!!! I was still pretty nervous. It looked like dough. It smelled like dough. It was stretchy and smooth like dough. Would it rise like dough? YES! It did. Like a dream!

I only have 2 pyrex bread pans so rather then attempt a loaf shape standing alone, I made some rolls.

And these are my pretty as a picture little Honey White Loaves. Be impressed! I certainly was! And I'm pretty sure that after the first time, it won't be nearly as scary the second...I hope. Lol.