Homemade White Bread & Sweet Honey Butter

Who likes homemade bread? I do, I do! It has taken me a while to actually make some because I don't have a bread machine and I know it takes quite a while to make homemade bread by hand. This recipe that I found in the Cooking for Two cookbook actually wasn't too bad! It took a while to get to the finished product since you have to let it rise and all that, but it was really easy to make. :) Eventually I want to get some wheat flour and make homemade wheat bread, but I thought I'd start by making homemade white bread since we had all the ingredients to make it.


Ingredients:
1/2 cup milk + 1/2 cup water
1 package active dry yeast
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
2 Tbsp. sugar
3 1/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp. salt

Directions:
Heat milk in saucepan just until warm. Pour into mixing bowl. Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup warm water. Add to milk. Stir in oil, sugar, salt, and 2 cups of the flour. Beat at low speed with electric mixer 1 minute, and then on high for 2 minutes. Stir in remaining flour until you can't stir any more. Knead the dough on floured surface, adding flour if needed to make a slightly stiff dough. Place in greased bowl and cover. Put in warm area to rise (I turn the oven to 200 for a few minutes just to warm it, and then I turn it off before placing the bread inside). Let rise until double (about 1 hour).
Punch the dough down. Roll in flour and shape into loaf. Grease a loaf pan and place dough in pan. Cover and let rise in warm area until almost double in size. Heat oven to 375. Place loaf in oven and bake 30-45 minutes. Remove from pan and place on cooling rack. Tastes yummy served warm with sweet honey butter. (see recipe below)

The "I" in the recipe above is referring to the author of the cookbook. Just thought I'd clarify that the "I" wasn't talking about me. :) This recipe only makes one loaf, so I doubled the recipe and made two loaves. Also, I've never seen anything with such a big difference in time (30-45 minutes), so I experimented and did 35 minutes. I think that was a little too much time because the top of the bread came out darker. I think 30 minutes would be just fine. It does taste really good right out of the oven with honey butter on it!

Sweet Honey Butter

1/4 cup honey

3 Tbsp. butter

2 Tbsp. powdered sugar

1/2 tsp. vanilla

Soften butter. Cream together butter and honey. Mix in powdered sugar and vanilla until well blended. Spread over warm bread or scones.

This honey butter recipe wasn't my favorite, but it was still yummy! It's pretty sweet, so be sure not to put too much on your hot bread (the bread soaks it right up when it's hot, making it seem like it doesn't have much honey butter on it, but don't keep adding more! That was the mistake I made, so it was really really sweet!) I doubled the recipe for the honey butter so I would have more for when I had toast for breakfast or whatever.

Hope you enjoy your homemade bread with honey butter! :)