Easy white bread

For some reason I love to bake. I find it relaxing. So for the past few days my husband has been talking about getting a bread maker as he really wants to try and eat as much from scratch as he can. Now I love making bread from scratch but it does take some time which I usually don't have. Well today we my day off so craving fresh homemade bread I spent some over due time in the kitchen and made some bread for the family.

I have a book on bread making and it has a ton of different types to make. One day I will get round to trying each one of them. But today I just wanted a quick bread so I made this recipe up. It's for a white bread but I have subbed a cup of white flour with a cup of wheat once and it still worked fine.

This makes 2 loaves.

2 teaspoon yeast
1 cup warm water
2 Tbsp butter
1 cup milk
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp salt
5 1/2-6 1/2 cups flour

Pour the water into a bowl and sprinkle the yeast on top. Let this sit and stand for 5 minutes,

Meanwhile melt the butter and add this to the milk, sugar and salt. Add 1 cup of flour to the yeast mixture and then add the milk mix. Stir until it becomes a  lumpy loose batter.

Add another 4 1/2 cups of flour. Stir until a floury, shaggy dough is formed.  Turn this out onto the counter and knee the dough by hand adding a little more flour if needed until the dough is smooth, slightly tacky and forms a ball without sagging and springs back when poked.

Oil a mixing bowl and place the dough in the bowl to rise, about 1 hour. Place in a warm spot. (I turn the oven on and lower the heat to the lowest setting and place my bowl on top of that.)

Once risen divide the dough into 2. Shape these each into a loose ball. Let them rest for 10 minutes.

Grease two loaf pans. Shape each ball of dough into a loaf shape and let them rise again for 30-40 minutes.

When they are almost done rising this second time. Turn the oven up to 425 degrees. F And place the loaves in the oven. Once in. The oven turn the heat down to 375 F and bake for 30-35 minutes.