More Bread Experiments

[peteyfrogboy]

I was home sick yesterday, so of course I did the natural thing and made up a batch of bread (I also made egg noodles for soup, but nothing exciting there). This time I changed things up by using milk instead of water. It took longer to rise because it was colder in the house (it ended up going about 24 hours total), but it got there eventually. I baked it at 400° for 30 minutes covered and 20 minutes uncovered. It came out nice and brown, with a chewy crust and yummy soft middle. I'm not sure if the softer crust was a result of the shorter baking time or the milk or both, but I like it. The previous loaves had really hard crusts right out of the oven, though they softened after being bagged for a while. All in all, this was a successful experiment, and I'm seriously contemplating whipping up another batch to make cinnamon raisin bread out of tomorrow...

UPDATE: I made up another batch of dough using the same recipe with the addition of 1/4 c. sugar. Half of this will go into a loaf pan as cinnamon raisin bread, and the other half will be made into steamed bao. Stay tuned for further developments.