Learning about Bread

Today is a day of wonderful insight and learning!!! I've realized after 3 years of baking my own bread that i've been doing it WRONG! (*sigh*).

3 years ago i asked a close friend for her bread recipe because we had recently moved to a place far away from stores. There was no nearby place to by bread.

For the past 3 years i have used 1 tablespoon of instant yeast for 500ml (2.5cups) of liquid. I've always wondered how other women could get 40 buns out of their simple bread recipe and i had to double my recipe to get 40 (and small, at that!). Today i know the truth! My recipe is a half recipe and the yeast measurement is inaccurate. It should be 3-4 tablespoons of yeast for 1 liter of liquid (5cups). NO WONDER!! You should have seen me before! Trying to coax a 1 tablespoon yeast dough to raise. I'd set it in the sun, pre-warm the oven and set it in, cover it with plastic, etc. etc. etc... it'd take me more than an hour to get it to raise enough that i'd consider forming my buns from it. Even then it wasn't the bubbly overflow my friends had...

TODAY... i used 3.5 tablespoons of yeast in my dough... you should have seen it grow! In only 30 minutes it was almost double! I've never been able to bake bread in the mornings while my son is at school because it takes too long. Today i did it all and had time to spare. WOW! WOW! WOW!

I'm a happy girl now. I have 43 big buns in my freezer.

~Cindy~