I Finally Baked Some Bread!!

First off, I have to give a huge shout out and thanks to @tanglebranch!! She bakes some awesome looking white bread and posted her technique for me and all her fans!! According to @edthecanadian, it’s pretty dang good too!! This is the technique here if you haven’t seen it. It’s past payout so please show her some love on a more recent post! That’s why I say that I finally baked some bread! Sorry it took me so long but between some health and financial issues it couldn’t be helped. I got the ingredients fast enough but it took me awhile to buy some new baking dishes. I can’t use non-stick pans with teflon so I decided to go with ceramic. One really good thing was that I bought them using reward points that I had saved up from Walmart so I didn’t pay anything out of pocket…yay!!
I haven’t baked bread in over twenty years and I’ve never baked white bread. I used to make wheat bread and braided breads. I did it for awhile and then I was going through a breakup so everything got packed away or given away. Fast forward to 2018 and that bread by @tanglebranch looked so good that I wanted to bake bread again and white bread as well. I got the ingredients and, finally, the pans and I had a recipe or two to try.
My first attempt didn’t go so well but it had nothing to do with the technique. I think it was mostly operator error and elemental error. I didn’t get enough rise in the bread and it came out a little dense..kind of like me..lol! Actually, it was a lot dense. I think part of the problem may have been that our house is a little cold and I added the salt without a buffer. It looked great and tasted fine but it was pretty heavy. I may have also added too much flour after the first rise when I was forming the loaves so, again, it could be and probably was operator error. I did use a thermometer to make sure the water temperature was in a good range for the yeast to work so I think that part was fine and it was freshly bought yeast. I read up more on possible things to try differently and I decided to try another loaf using a different recipe. By the time I made the third loaf, there was only one loaf left out of the two I made previously. I was careful not to use too much flour when forming the loaf and let it rise both times in the open oven with only the pilot light on for some warmth. The first two I turned the oven on low for a few minutes then turned it off and left it closed with the two loaves inside for the second rise which may have also kept them from rising properly. The third loaf rose a lot more than the first two and I liked the flavor better overall so I think I will stick with that recipe when I bake it again. I think with a couple more little tweaks here and there that the next batch will turn out to be even better!! Below are some photos of the third loaf and the first two that I baked and a comparison photo as well!

Third loaf cut

Third loaf whole

First loaf cut

First two loaves whole

Comparing the difference in rise

I like bread toasted with butter and a dash of salt & pepper

My two new ceramic baking pans

YUM!!