Country White Bread

Back in October, I was in Seattle and my best friend took me to this french bakery. It had the most amazing white bread! It was all nice and soft and crusty and chewy with good yeasty flavor. Ever since then, I've CRAVED good white bread, well kneaded, perfectly chewy.

I looked at many places and I couldn't find a bread that was both wonderfully sweet and chewy and not dry. So, what did I do? I tried to find a recipe online. This was the recipe I found:

Ingredients:

2 (.25 ounce) packages active dry yeast (4 teaspoon does the trick if you're like me and have yeast in bulk)

2 cups warm water (110 degrees to 115

degrees)

1/2 cup sugar

1 tablespoon salt

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 cup vegetable oil (maybe 1/2 cup, the other 1/4 cup for oiling the dough to prevent it from sticking)

6 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (you might need 7 when you add what you use for kneading)

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in water. Add sugar, salt, eggs, oil and 3 cups of flour; beat until smooth. Stir in enough remaining flour to form a soft dough. Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 6 to 8 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour. Punch dough down. Divide in half and shape into loaves. Place in two greased 9-in. x 5-in. x 3-in loaf pans. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour. Bake at 375 degrees F for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from pans to cool on wire racks.

Banana Bread

I made banana bread yesterday! :D

I really like my banana bread recipe. I found it online 3 years ago and no longer remember where I got it. I can't even find it anymore. Anyway, the first time I made it was when I wanted to get rid of a bunch of old bananas. I had enough to make a double batch, so I tried to do that. When I was making it, I remembered to double everything except the flour and didn't realize it until I decided to make the recipe again. After some experimentation, I came up with the following recipe:

Mad Hao Guru's Banana Bread Recipe :)

INGREDIENTS

1/4 cup butter, softened

1 cup white sugar

1 egg

3-5 large  ripe bananas, mashed (the more bananas the better the flavor; I like black bananas unfrozen that I mush by hand)

1 – 1.5 cups all-purpose flour (I use 1.25 when I make a double batch, but it really doesn’t matter THAT much, try to scale it in proportion to the bananas when you find a good ratio)

1 teaspoon baking soda (sometimes I add just ½ per loaf because it makes it a bit more dense)

1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease an 8x4 inch loaf pan.

2) In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Beat in the egg and mashed bananas. Mix in flour, baking soda and salt just until combined. Pour into prepared loaf pan.

3) Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour. If top begins to brown too quickly, decrease heat slightly. Center should be soft and chewy, while the outside, crisp and crunchy.