Regular bread

Regular bread. One egg in a cup, then oil to keep the bread moist, butter works too, this bread will be buttered lavishly later, then water to 1+1/3 cup. Dumped into mixing bowl. Yeast and flour to start. Two cups flour directly into the mix with one cup flour in reserve. So that is slightly over double the flour in scoops to total liquids. My flour scoops are condensed dense scoops. Dough mixed. Rested. By resting and testing I can tell how much more flour will be absorbed and the yeast is started, and most the flour has begun to autolyze. Salt added, and the remaining flour. 

Pulses in the machine until the dough balls up. This happens very quickly using Cuisinart even with the dough blade. Within one minute. The flour does not need to be sifted, that occurs by violent shearing, this flour was in lumps.

The machine is brilliant at this. The drag about using a machine is cleaning it. I don't like that, and any machine is a drag to clean. Dishwasher or not, it just is. 

It is a lofty loaf. Its hollowness, its weight tells me this is not nutritious bread. There is sourdough starter sitting right there that could have been used to make this more nutritious and interesting, but I did not do that. This is 100% commercial yeast, un-aged as large large scale bakeries do, so without character. It will hold other things but that's it. 

I was nineteen years old when I first baked bread in my second apartment. It was an experiment. It worked. I carefully followed a Betty Crocker book that explained every single detail and what to expect. The two loaves were glorious. I shared them. Everyone agreed it is simply astounding the difference it makes. 

These are the pans that I used. 

And they are the cheapest stupidest things. Using them reminds me how much I didn't know anything about what I was attempting and how that doesn't matter. It is a little bit sad, pathetic actually, looking back now how utterly uncomprehending I was to everything, how mysterious baked bread was then, how much of a task to produce it compared to how careless and fast and simple it is now, so that I actually sort of scorn it. It's fun to see it puff, but then, eh.