Well, practice makes perfect. And this, my friends, is as perfect as I’m likely to get making bread. Not to brag or anything, but I FAR prefer our bread to the sliced mystery you get at the grocery store. I like this stuff so much I’ve asked Jess to pack two slices (with homemade butter, of course), into my lunch every day. Nummy!

It’s a modification of my old bread recipe. After lots of practice and many mistakes, I’ve found some things that work. No doubt I’ll come up with other shortcuts in future, and probably ruin it in the process, but for now it works pretty well. And for somebody who isn’t much smarter than bread himself, well, I like it.

Put 6 cups hot (116°) water in a measuring bowl and add 1/4 cup (4 T) yeast. Then combine the following in the bread mixer:
12 cups whole wheat flour
3 cups white flour
1 1/2 T salt
1 cup brown sugar (I like mild honey instead, but we ran out)
1/3 cup oil
3 T dough enhancer (this is the ticket, friends, to good soft bread)

Pour the yeast mixture in and mix the whole schmere for 10 minutes. While it’s mixin’, grease 6 bread pans. When it’s done mixin’, grease your (immaculately clean) hands and divide the dough evenly among the pans. I twist the lumps of dough a little to smooth them out. Set the pans in the oven to rise (don’t turn it on; but flip on the oven light so you can see when it’s riz). It takes less than an hour for the bread to rise up big and puffy (at least I think it does; I’m always off doing something else while the bread rises). At that point, turn the oven on to 375° for 30 minutes or so, and remove when the loaves sound kind of hollow when flipped with a fingernail. Slather with homemade butter and enjoy.

See, it’s not an exact science. You may want to divide this recipe in half or even thirds (I tripled the batch from the cookbook, along with other modifications). But hey, our forebears didn’t have timers and thermostats to make their bread. Just kind of wing it, learn from your mistakes, and enjoy. I sure do!