Although I have a handful of bread and dough recipes I like to use, when I'm busy and need to get a dough ready for anything from bread to buns, pizza to cinnamon rolls, there is a basic white dough recipe I turn to as it's just a simple, basic, classic dough that works for almost anything. The only way you can really mess it up is if you forget about it during the raising process and it raises too high, gets full of air and collapses when you finally remember it a few hours later. Uh, hmm... not that I've done that or anything?
Ok. Not only have I done that, I do it quite often. Ha. And last week I was busy and although I made the dough into three long, french style looking loaves, I left them to raise and promptly forgot about them. When I remembered, they had risen so high they all joined together on the pan and were full of air. No worries.
If this happens, just poke your fingers into it. As it falls, continue to poke indentations all over the dough, drizzle with olive oil or brush with butter and then cover in a sprinkle of dried parsley, fresh minced garlic and a bit of garlic salt or garlic powder and Parmesan cheese. Then, pretend like you planned to make a garlic flat bread the whole time.
This is also very good to cut into bread sticks and serve with a side of melted garlic butter or marinara or pizza sauce!
Classic White Bread Dough
12 oz. water
1 1/2 t salt
2 T butter
4 c bread flour or all purpose flour
2-3 T dry milk (I pour it in but never measure)
2 T sugar
1 3/4 t dry yeast (although I don't always measure this either as mine comes from a large jar). One small individual package is 2 1/4 teaspoons.
Place into your bread machine in order listed (water, salt butter, flour, milk, sugar, yeast) unless of course your machine has a different order needed to achieve results (some make you do the dry first). You can also put them in your KitchenAid mixer and mix on low to knead for about 10 minutes. I have let it raise, punch it down, shape into my bread loaf in a greased pan, let raise again and bake - and have also taken it out after mixing and shaped it and let it do just one rise before baking. Both worked with this recipe.
Use the dough as you want. For bread it makes 2 loaves - bake about 25 minutes at 350.
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| This was three long, thin loaves that I let raise too long and forgot about. No worries! Now, flat bread. |
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| Bake until golden brown and serve as if you planned it that way the whole time. |
