Smells like..

nope not Teen Spirit, am I dating myself? It smells like Honey Wheat Bread.

Fresh bread, can you smell it??

A couple of weekends ago Nadim and I went out to dinner at Outback Steakhouse.  We usually don't eat at chains like this, but we were in the mood for a cheaper steak dinner.  Anyway, we really enjoyed the bread they served before the meal.  I searched around for a recipe and found this one.

So today the kids and I had a food science day.  We started out with the yeast and a thermometer to measure how warm the water was.  I was looking for a temp between 110-120 and it took a few tries to get it right.

Finally warm water

We added 2 packages of yeast to 1 tsp of sugar plus the warm water and watched what happened.

yeast producing carbon dioxide

The kids were amazed at how foamy the yeast got.  While the yeast was activating we put together the rest of the wet ingredients, butter, honey, molasses and salt.  I specifically looked for a recipe that had molasses in it.  The molasses makes the color darker and also adds a deeper note to the sweetness in the bread.

Initial mixing

Next we added the flour.  It is important to note that this recipe makes 4 loaves of bread, and that translates to a lot of dough.  I mixed it using my Kitchen Aid Mixer and my bowl was a little bit small.  At one point I turned the mixer up to high and a bunch of flour flung out onto the counter top.  I managed to get it mixed though.

Adding the four

After the dough was mixed I turned it out to knead.  This was probably the most difficult part.  There was really a lot of dough, it was very sticky and hard to work with.  We managed to do it though.  If I had to do it again I would probably make only half of the recipe.

proof round 1

After the dough was kneaded I put it in a large buttered bowl and proofed it in my oven for about an hour.  

dough has doubled in size

The kids were amazed by how much the dough grew over the course of an hour.  The most exciting part though was "punching" the dough down.  Then it was all hands on deck to try and cut the dough into  four pieces.

hmm, how to split this into 4 pieces

At the suggestion of Son 1 I used a pizza cutter and that seemed to work well.  I wrapped up two pieces of the dough to freeze for later.

packaging loaves for the freezer

Next we buttered up two pans and put the remaining loaves into the oven to proof for another hour.  

proofing round 2

The loaves weren't the prettiest thing, but I was going for educational value here.

finished proofing round 2

An hour later the loaves were finished proofing and ready to be baked.

bread is out of the oven!

After baking for 40 minutes we had finished loaves!  The house smelled great and the kids kept running to the oven to see what was happening.  We learned some interesting things, like making bread is quite a bit of work, yeast working is what makes air bubbles in bread, and fresh baked bread is yummy!

slice of bread with butter, the crusts I removed for Son 1 and Daughter

Once the bread cooled off we all had a slice and enjoyed the fruits of our labor.  I sure am glad I can buy bread instead of making it.