the secret to baking bread

I am now about to publicly share a secret about bread baking. I have  been baking homemade bread for many, many years impressing friends and relatives. haha.
The secret is that it is really really easy to bake homemade bread. Just don't overthink it.

The biggest secret is that you only need one small bowl for the yeast and one huge bowl for all the rest of the ingredients.

Put a few tablespoons yeast in the bowl. Add a spoonful  of sugar and some cups of really hot water. Stir this and wait 5 minutes. If you did it right, the yeast will bubble up and be good for the bread. If not, the yeast is bad or the water was too hot or cold. Once is the yeast is bubbly you are guaranteed good bread.

Now dump the rest of the ingredients into a huge bowl. Add extras you like in bread. I add oatmeal, wheat germ, leftover boxed cereal (seriously) whatever.  Then knead a bit till it feels like dough, add flour if it's sticky. Knead it in the bowl, who wants a bunch of flour on the countertop?  Let it sit an hour or until you get around to baking it. Divide into 4 loaves so it's worth the trouble, freeze the leftovers.

The last picture is the cookbook I used when I first started baking. It was my mom's. :)

I would include a picture of the finished bread, but it's not done yet. Tomorrow's blog.