I get really excited when I find another use for sourdough starter discard. But don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with fed sourdough starter either. It’s just that I hardly ever think to feed my starter the night before so that I can use it the next day. I am simply not that well prepared or disciplined. I’m more of a “let’s wait and see what I feel like baking today” kind of gal. OK, I do know how to be terribly efficient and have every aspect of a large dinner party or gathering planned down to a gnat’s eyelash. (I have spreadsheets to prove it.) But I haven’t had to do that recently. Not since we a) stopped hosting JazzVox concerts in January (we held 104 concerts including a full meal over the course of 12 years in our home before we felt it was time to give ourselves a rest) and b) the coronavirus erupted and we along with everyone else were (and still are) restricted to social distancing, limiting exposure, and working hard to stem the spread of this deadly disease. So no dinner parties, cocktail parties, or gathering of any size in our home at all. (Sound familiar?)

Believe me, I am not complaining. Mr. C. and I are truly lucky, and we don’t take our wonderful life for granted. It’s just that life is different now. And so I have really changed my attitude. If something needs to be done, I usually muster up the energy to get it done. (Well most of the time I can.) But if it’s making even a small plan like baking sourdough bread ahead of time, not so much anymore. So using sourdough discard has become almost the norm for me since the old me has gone the way of dodo birds. (I know, all this rhetoric just to explain why I love sourdough discard. You must be yawning in your chair by now. Sorry about that!)

Anyway, I started with a recipe for ciabatta bread I found on-line and changed it so much, that even the original baker wouldn’t recognize it in its current state. So I’m just going to call it my recipe for ciabatta hoagie rolls. And because it’s my recipe now, I need to do a little bragging at this point. This recipe makes really delicious hoagie rolls, or French dip sandwich rolls, or even just wonderful toast to go with your morning eggs.

Anyway you cut them, these simple rolls are easy to build, take very little attention, and can be made in a day. Of course, there’s a bit of waiting for them to rise time involved. But time is what I have plenty of right now. And yes I know, I’m in the lucky minority in that regard.

So if you too have some time on your hands, build yourself and your family some type of bread. Because I tell you true, there is just nothing better than the smell of bread baking away in an oven. Why that is, I don’t know. For me, it’s like being a young child again and walking into my grandparent’s kitchen. There was always bread baking and a grandmother who loved me enough to let me cut both ends off a loaf and smear them with home churned butter and homemade jelly or jam. Sounds idyllic. In many respects it truly was.

So with pleasant reminders of my childhood drifting through my brain, I’m going to bid you adieu for today. Since it’s almost 4:00 pm, perhaps I should start thinking about what to fix for dinner. Yah think?!?!

Peace and love to all.

¾ c. sourdough starter discard

1½ tsp. active dry yeast

¾ c. lukewarm water

1½ tsp. extra virgin olive oil   

1½ tsp. kosher salt

2½ – 3 c. unbleached all-purpose flour

Mix the sourdough starter, yeast, and water in the bowl of your stand mixer. Let sit for 5 minutes.

Add the olive oil, salt, and 2 cups flour. Using your dough hook, knead the dough, adding flour as required, to make a slightly tacky, smooth, satiny, elastic dough.  

Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it rise for about 90 minutes, or until doubled in size. Gently deflate the dough and turn it onto a lightly floured work surface. Pat the dough into a rectangle about 7 x 14-inches. Using a dough cutter, sharp knife, or pizza wheel, cut the rectangle into half lengthwise. Then cut each half in half. Your ultimate goal is to have 4 pieces of dough 7×3½ inches. However, don’t make yourself crazy with exact measurements. You simply want 4 rectangular rolls that are all about the same size.  

Place the rolls well apart on a lightly greased or parchment paper lined baking sheet. Cover the rolls with a clean tea towel and let rise for about 60 minutes or until slightly puffy.   

While the rolls rise, preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Just before placing in the oven, lightly spray the loaves with water, then sprinkle with a thin layer of flour.

Bake the rolls for 10 minutes. Lower the oven temperature to 375 degrees and bake for an additional 15 minutes, or until the rolls are a very light brown. The internal temperature should reach at least 200 degrees. 

Turn off the oven, crack the door a couple of inches, and allow rolls to stay in the cooling oven for about 30 minutes. Then remove to a wire rack to finish cooling. Store in an airtight container or bag. Make great sandwich rolls, French dip buns, and fabulous breakfast toast. This recipe can easily be doubled.

   

First thing you should know, cheeseburgers are my favorite food. (No gourmet this gal!) But in all honesty, I have never been able to produce a homemade hamburger as good as say Red Robin’s Guacamole Burger. And for the life of me, I don’t know why that is. But I never stop trying and I am always disappointed with the results. Maybe disappointed is too heavy. Maybe I just wish my burgers were as good as the rockin’ robin can make them! And maybe the real reason I can’t duplicate a restaurant burger is because someone else did the cookin’ of that burger! (Believe me, I’ve gone down that dead end road more than I care to admit.) But even making homemade hamburger buns, using top quality ground beef, and making homemade sauce for the burgers, the overall product is simply not as delectable.

So yesterday when I tried once again to make a superior burger at home, I produced a good imitation, but it still wasn’t as good as the “real” thing. However, the buns were outrageous. There isn’t a restaurant anywhere around that has anything on my buns! Just sayin’!

And even though I seasoned the meat, cut up lettuce, tomatoes, onion, and made perfectly wonderful hamburger sauce and homemade guacamole, I’m still not close to enjoying my own burgers as much as a good old fashioned, fat and sauce dripping off your elbows, much too salty burger that comes from a restaurant or burger stand.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Why keep trying? Why not just go out for a burger once in a while? Well, you’re right. That’s exactly what I should and undoubtedly will do. But darn – I hate when I can’t prepare something at home that’s as simple as a decent cheeseburger. What kind of a cook does that make me? Waaah (pity party happenin’ here folks)

So being the stubborn critter I know myself to be, I will probably just keep trying until either I find perfection or I lose every one of the few remaining wits I still have at my disposal! But now with this recipe, I at least have a really good and simple recipe for delicious hamburger buns. As do you now!

But dang, if you have the secret to homemade hamburger perfection, please share. I am but a “reply” away and would love to hear from you. Or you can email me at chezcarrcuisine@wavecable.com.  

As always, love and peace to all.

BTW – I cut one of the buns in half this morning, toasted each half on the bagel setting, spread them with peanut butter and marionberry jelly, and served them alongside our easy over eggs. Loved every bite. Perfect use for leftover buns.

¾ c. sourdough starter discard

¾ c. lukewarm water

1½ tsp. active dry yeast

1 T. granulated sugar

1 egg, divided

2 T. nonfat dry milk

1½ tsp. kosher salt

4 T. (½ stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

2 T. potato flour (not potato starch)

¼ c. whole wheat pastry flour or regular whole wheat flour

2½ c. unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tsp. water

sesame seeds or Everything Seasoning (recipe below), opt.

In the bowl of your stand mixer, combine the sourdough starter, water, active dry yeast, and sugar. Let sit for 5 minutes.

Using your dough hook, mix in the white of the egg (reserve the yolk for brushing the buns before they go in the oven), dry milk, salt, butter, potato flour, whole wheat pastry flour, and just 2 cups of unbleached all-purpose flour.  Mix all the ingredients together for 2 to 3 minutes to make a sticky, cohesive dough. Then knead until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 5-6 more minutes. Add the rest of the flour or additional flour as needed. The dough should not feel sticky, but there might be a bit that sticks to the bottom of your mixer.

Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let rest in a warm place for about 90 minutes or until about doubled in bulk.  

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and form into a round ball. Using a dough scraper or large bladed knife, cut the ball in half, then each half into 4 equal sized pieces. Let dough triangles rest for 10 minutes. Shape each piece into a tight ball and place them on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet, or into the lightly greased wells of a hamburger bun pan. (If you use a silicone hamburger bun mold like I do, (see picture) no greasing required.)  

Press the balls gently to flatten them slightly. If you are using a bun pan, the dough should come close to filling the wells of the bun pan.

Loosely cover the buns with a clean tea towel, and let them rise until puffy, about 90 minutes in a warm place.

Twenty minutes before you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Whisk the egg yolk and water together.

Uncover the buns and gently brush them with the egg yolk mixture. (Brush lightly because you don’t want to deflate the dough.) Sprinkle with sesame seeds, Everything Seasoning, or topping of choice.

Bake the buns for about 20 minutes, or until golden brown and a digital thermometer inserted into the side of one bun reads at least 190 degrees.

Remove from oven and allow to cool on a wire rack before serving. Buns can be stored at room temperature for several days in an airtight container. Freeze for longer storage.

“EVERYTHING” SEASONING

2 T. poppy seeds

2 T. sesame seeds

1 T. dried finely minced onion (I semi-crush the dehydrated onion in my mortar and pestle before adding it to the other ingredients)

1 tsp. granulated garlic

1 tsp. kosher salt

Mix all ingredients together and store in an air-tight container.

   

Even though I have more bread recipes than any one person can reasonably hope to bake, I’m always trying new combinations of ingredients to up the nutrition and flavor for that one slice of bread I allow myself to eat every day. Now please understand, if my body would allow it, I would eat some type of bread with each of my meals. Because I love bread. Matters not if it’s in the form of a loaf, or English muffin, or bagel, or cornbread, etc. etc., I love them all. But as I’m aging, or should I say, as both Mr. C. and I are accumulating years, we absolutely need to cut down on carbs. Wahhh. But carbs are what make everything taste good. So how to handle this predicament? (It really is an unpleasant reality of growing older.)

Well, the first thing to consider is the nutritional value of the carbs that we do eat. Because truly, you can’t get away from carbs. For example, we both love sweet potatoes, brown rice, and lentils. Yes they are high in carbs, but they are none the less very, very good for us. We just need to learn to enthusiastically embrace portion control. (Like that’s ever going to happen!)

So this bread contains oats. Oats may be one of the healthiest whole grain foods on this planet. It also contains some whole wheat flour and whole milk. (BTW, since we use very little milk, we always buy whole milk.) An interesting fact about milk from the Guardian:

“Low-fat milks may contain 1% or 2% fat, while whole milk contains 3.25% fat. Cup for cup, whole fat milk contains fewer carbohydrates than low-fat or skim because more of its volume is made up of fat, which does not contain lactose. It also has slightly less protein.”

So bottom line. Yes this bread contains carbohydrates. But it has some redeeming qualities too. Besides being full blown, in your face, really and truly delectable. And undeniably easy to build.

So if there is one bread recipe I would advise a novice sourdough bread baker to try from the plethora of bread recipes that grace this site, it would be this one.

As always, stay safe, stay savvy, and stay happy. Peace and love to all.

Combine the sourdough starter, yeast, honey, olive oil, salt, and milk in the bowl of your stand mixer. Let sit for 5 minutes.

Using your dough hook, stir until combined. Stir in the oats, whole wheat flour, and enough of the all-purpose flour to form a rough, shaggy dough.

Knead the dough for about 5 minutes or until the dough comes together into a smooth ball. (There probably will still be a bit of dough languishing on the bottom of the bowl. Ignore it.) The finished dough should still be sticky, but should easily form a ball and feel elastic.

Pour a bit of olive oil over the dough, and using your hands, roll the dough (even the recalcitrant dough from the bottom of the bowl) into a ball. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for about 1½ hours. (It won’t quite double in bulk, but it should look larger and puffy.)

Roughly shape the dough into a loaf, then place in a greased 9×5-inch loaf pan. Pat the dough into the corners of the pan and flatten the top as much as possible.

Loosely cover the dough with plastic wrap that has been lightly coated with cooking spray (greased side down). Let loaf rise for 60-75 minutes or until the dough has just cleared the top of the pan.  

When you see the dome of the loaf just starting to peek over the top of the pan, pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. (This should give the oven time to pre-heat before the loaf is ready to bake.)

Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the loaf is dark brown and registers at least 190 degrees on an instant read thermometer.

Remove from oven and tip the loaf out onto a cooling rack. Let cool completely before slicing. Store in an airtight container. 

 

OK, I’ve baked a lot of bread in the last 50 some years. But I have never, ever baked a loaf of sourdough sandwich bread that compares with this simple recipe I found on the tastesoflizzyt.com site. Easy? OMG! It could not be easier to prepare. Delicious? Truly, could not be better tasting. (I did make a couple of changes, but nothing significant.)

Even the crumb on this bread is perfect. If there hadn’t been a Papa Murphy’s thin crust pizza already in the oven baking away to perfection, we probably would have devoured the whole flaming loaf last evening. (I just had to cut off a piece, spread it with soft butter, and give the bread a taste test. And yes, I cut the piece in half and Mr. C. got to pick which half he wanted.) (And yes, we do buy a “to be baked at home” pizza every once in a while, especially since fear of contracting the coronavirus is preventing us from frequenting fine dining establishments in our area.)

We also do takeout most Friday evenings when our dear friends Mark and Vicki come over to check the progress on their new home that’s being built right next to ours. We remain very adamant about social distancing during their visits however. But truly look forward to our Friday evenings enjoying an adult beverage and eating take out with our good buddies. The fun will really begin when they can actually move into their new digs. (And yes, one of the reasons we do take out is to support the businesses in our community. It might sound corny, but it’s never-the-less a fact.) But back to this bread.

I couldn’t believe how quickly this bread dough came together. And what a beautiful dough this recipe produced. Smooth and silky to the touch and very easy to shape. And I know that sounds strange. But some bread dough just looks and feels better than others. (Perhaps I’ve been making too much bread lately. Or maybe my lack of awareness of how being house bound has actually affected me, and its resulting in my exhibiting undue attention to bread dough pageantry. Regardless, I’m sticking to my original pronouncement. This bread dough is beautiful! And yes I will seek professional help if I become concerned that I’m approaching a bend which I should refrain from going around!)

So if you too find yourself with a sourdough starter that needs to be fed, but don’t relish the idea of discarding the discard, I truly recommend that you bake a loaf of this bread. This luscious loaf is really a thing of beauty and a joy forever. OK, maybe not forever. Maybe not even for a day. But while it lasts, this bread is truly a culinary delight.

As always, peace, love, and understanding to all.

¾ c. slightly warm milk 

1¼ tsp. active dry yeast

1½ tsp. granulated sugar

½ c. sourdough starter discard, room temperature

2 T. vegetable oil, plus more to grease the bowl  

½ tsp. kosher salt

¼ tsp. baking soda

2½ – 2¾ c. bread flour, or more as needed (depends on the thickness of your sourdough starter)

cooking spray

Pour the warmed milk into the bowl of your stand mixer. Sprinkle the yeast and sugar over the milk. Let sit for 5 minutes.

Add the sourdough starter, 2 tablespoons veggie oil, salt, baking soda, and 2 cups of the flour.

Using the dough hook, mix the ingredients on medium speed until they are combined. Then set the mixer to medium speed and knead for 4-5 minutes. The dough should be slightly tacky to the touch. If you feel the dough is too wet, add additional flour, being careful not to add too much. 

Pour a wee bit of vegetable oil in the bowl, and using your hands, form the dough into a ball lightly coated with the oil. Cover with plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise in a warm place for 45-60 minutes or until doubled in bulk.

Form the dough into a loaf shape and place in a greased 9×5-inch loaf pan. Pat the dough into the corners of the pan and flat on top. Cover with a piece of plastic wrap that has been lightly coated with cooking spray, (spray side down over the pan), and allow the dough to rise for another 30 minutes or so. (Dough should just barely be higher than the rim of the pan.)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Spray the top of the dough with cooking spray. Bake the bread for about 30 minutes. The top should be golden brown and the internal temperature should read at least 200 degrees.

Remove from oven and turn bread out onto a wire rack to cool completely before slicing. (Do not be tempted to slice the bread when it is still warm. It will turn to mush.) Store in an airtight container.

 

      

There are two ingredients I am especially fond of. One is sourdough starter and the other is cornmeal. And when I put them together it’s like sunshine in my mouth.

Now I have to admit, sourdough cornbread might not be for everyone. You really have to like the tanginess of sourdough to enjoy it in cornbread. But for those of you who do prize a good sourdough “anything”, this is a recipe you are going to enjoy preparing and eating over and over again. First of all, this cornbread is stinkin’ easy to build. No fancy ingredients required. Don’t even have to get out your mixer. Just stir a few ingredients together, pour the mess in a pan, and throw it in the oven. Bam. You’re done!

And what do you get for this tiny bit of effort? Well, you get a very moist and delicious cornbread that can be eaten for breakfast slathered with butter and honey. Or for lunch with a nice bowl of soup or chili. Or for dinner as an accompaniment to just about anything you wish to serve it with. To my thinking, the definition of cornbread should read “a very versatile bread that can be eaten with every meal”. Pretty much sums it up!

Anyway, we love this cornbread and hope you enjoy it too. Plus it’s one more way to use up your sourdough discard.

So as always – have fun in your kitchen, keep trying new dishes with which to thrill and delight your family, and remember to pat yourself on the back once in a while for a job well done. Life is not easy right now. And good food is probably more important than ever. If nothing else, it’s something for the whole family to look forward to 3 times a day. (Plus treats in-between of course!)

And for all you foodies out there, my dear friend Vicki had been bugging me for weeks to watch a Netflix documentary entitled Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat with Samin Nosrat. Since Mr. C. and I are avid readers, we hardly ever watch TV unless it’s an old British comedy or murder mystery. Even then, only very occasionally. So Vicki had to practically twist my arm to get me to watch this program.

So I decided last night I would watch a bit of it just before bed so that I could talk intelligently with Vicki about the series. Well, two episodes later and well past my bedtime, I was enchanted by both Samin (passionate foodie, chef, and food writer), the foods and countries she visited, and can’t wait to view the other two episodes this evening. Then I plan to watch them again! So much to learn. So little time.  

So if you find yourself with a bit of time, I recommend you turn on your TV and set yourself down with a nice glass of wine, and prepare to truly be entertained. And educated. And possibly enchanted the way I was.

And as always, thank you Vicki for both your friendship and your persistence. I absolutely love the series and hope to incorporate what I am learning into all of my future culinary endeavors.

¾ c. sourdough starter discard

½ c. whole milk  

¼ c. (½ stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 lg. egg

3 T. honey  

¾ c. fine ground cornmeal

¼ c. unbleached all-purpose flour

¼ tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. fine sea salt

Whisk the sourdough starter, milk, melted butter, egg, and honey together in a mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk the cornmeal, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir just until combined. Don’t over mix. The batter will resemble thick pancake batter.

Cover the bowl with a tea towel, and leave at room temperature for three to four hours (no more than 4). 

When the batter has finished resting, thoroughly coat an 8-inch baking pan with butter.  Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake in a pre-heated 400 degree oven for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the middle of the pan. Or better yet, take its temperature with an instant-read thermometer. Cornbread is perfect when the temperature reads 195 degrees.

Remove from oven and enjoy hot out of the oven or allowed to cool completely and then warmed slightly in your microwave before serving.

And yes, many people bake cornbread in a cast iron skillet. I prefer a tender crust on my cornbread, but of course you can use a small cast iron skillet if that is your preference. This recipe doubles beautifully.    

 

OK, I call this whole wheat bread, but it isn’t made with all whole wheat flour. I tried that, and the bread was fine, but just a little too hearty (and healthy) for my taste. However, I did provide the recipe at the bottom of this post for those of you who are purists. But be advised, the 100% whole wheat bread is not for the faint of heart. But it will certainly help you towards your whole wheat badge from the local chapter of the “Indigenous Granola Eaters of America” food club. So there’s always that to consider! But back to this recipe.

First thing I need to admit is that I gave up looking for whole wheat sourdough sandwich bread recipes on the internet. Just plain couldn’t find any recipes that matched what I was looking for. So, being the stubborn pig-headed baker that I am, I winged it based on the 100% whole wheat recipe you find below. And believe me, any resemblance in the recipe for this bread you find below, to what I had originally written out, is mere coincidence. Nothing I assumed would happen, did. Every failure I thought I had created, wasn’t. The final product, that I had prepared myself to throw in the garbage, didn’t get tossed. The bread was actually really good.

The crumb was perfect for sandwiches. The crust was crunchy and would stand up to being stuffed into a sandwich bag. And toasted, then slathered with peanut butter and jam – well just plain yummy. Enough whole wheat and sourdough flavor to bring happiness in every bite. And although the dough required an overnight rise, the required steps to be performed the next day were very easy to accomplish. So all in all – I’m very pleased and will be making this bread for years to come.

If nothing else, this pandemic has forced me to bake bread on a full time basis. And I am truly looking forward to building our daily bread for as long as I can scoop flour out of a container and turn my KitchenAid mixer on go.

So to all my fellow bread bakers, I suggest you make this simple bread for your family. And as always – peace, love, and happy thoughts coming your way from Chez Carr.  

1 c. sourdough starter discard, room temperature

1 c. slightly warm water   

2 T. honey

2 tsp. molasses

2 T. unsalted butter, room temperature (in other words, very soft) 

1 tsp. kosher salt

1 c. whole wheat flour

2-2½ c. unbleached all-purpose flour     

Mix room temperature sourdough starter discard, water, honey, molasses, butter, and salt together in the bowl of your stand mixer. Add the whole wheat flour and mix with your dough hook. Add enough of the all-purpose flour until the dough doesn’t stick to the side of mixer bowl but much of it remain stuck to the bottom of the mixing bowl. The dough should be a little tacky, but not sticky. (You won’t be able to roll this dough into a ball like you would with most bread doughs. It will not keep a shape. It’s a very soft dough.) Cover with plastic wrap and let the dough sit for 12-18 hours.

Punch down the dough, then scoop it into a lightly greased 9×5-inch loaf pan. Pat the dough into the corners of the pan and as flat as possible. Cover with plastic wrap that has been lightly greased. Allow to rise for about 1 hour. About 30 minutes before you are ready to bake the bread, pre-heat oven to 425 degrees.

Bake for about 40 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 200 degrees. Remove from the oven and carefully turn out onto a rack to cool completely before slicing.

Note: There is a lot of information about sourdough starters on line these days. Great information, but some of it paints a sourdough starter as just a little too precious for me to handle. I’m of the KISS principle. (Keep It Simple Sister) Especially since I only use my starter 2 or 3 times a week. I consider a sourdough starter as simply an ingredient, not an honored guest in my home. Yes it must be fed regularly because it contains living fungus – Saccharomyces cerevisiae. (At least my starter does, because I used active dry yeast to start my starter.) But feeding it twice daily as some references would suggest? Not this kid. Plus I insist that I be able to use my sourdough starter any old time I want, regardless of whether it has been recently “fed” or has happily been residing in my refrigerator as discard for the last 7 days! So most of my recipes are based on a very liquidy starter that has come straight from the fridge. In this recipe however, please let the un-fed starter (discard) come to room temperature before adding additional ingredients.

Because there is so much I don’t know about sourdough starters, I have adopted the following simple rules as the guideline for my own recipes:

When a recipe calls for fed sourdough starter, it means flour and water have been added to my existing sourdough starter within the last 12-18 hours and the starter has been left to sit at room temperature overnight.  

A recipe that calls for sourdough discard means the sourdough starter has been languishing in the refrigerator for at least 24 hours after being fed and has gotten quite liquidy. It looks weak and dormant, with maybe a bit of liquid floating on top.

If my recipes don’t specify FED or DISCARD, it just means that you will need to adjust the amount of flour you use proportional to how thick or thin your starter is to begin with. Always start with smaller amounts of flour than listed and add flour as needed.   

SOURDOUGH WHOLE WHEAT SANDWICH BREAD (no added yeast) – from the holycowvegan.net site

 

1 c. sourdough starter discard

1 c. slightly warm water  

2 tsp. molasses

2½-3 c. whole wheat flour

1 tsp. kosher salt

1 tsp. apple cider vinegar

vegetable oil

Place the sourdough starter discard in the bowl of your stand mixer, along with the water, molasses, and 1 cup of the whole wheat flour. Mix well, cover, and let stand overnight.

The next morning, add the salt, vinegar, and 1 cup of flour. Using your dough hook, mix in enough additional flour to produce a dough that feels sticky, but doesn’t really stick to the sides of the bowl. Continue kneading for about 5 more minutes. You want a supple, smooth ball of dough that’s not too firm.

Pour a little of the vegetable oil into the bowl. Using your hands, roll the dough into a ball that is lightly coated with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm place for two hours or until doubled.

Grease a 9×5-inch loaf pan. When the dough is ready, punch it down, shape, and place it in the prepared pan. (To shape the dough, tuck about a third of the dough under from the right, then tuck another third under from the left, and then tuck in both ends. Then gently pat/finesse the dough into the corners. The dough is basically flat at this point.)  

Cover the dough loosely with a light weight tea towel and let rise for two hours. About 30 minutes before you are ready to bake the bread, pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees. Bake for about 40 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 200 degrees.  

Remove from oven and carefully turn out onto a rack to cool completely before slicing.