Here's the bread recipe that got raves at the Qfest. I've cut it in half, so it's about two loaves or so.
The night before, in a bowl put two cups flour and one cup of water and about one third teaspoon of yeast.
Mix and adjust flour or water so the mix is about the consistency of pan cake batter.
Cover with wrap or whatever and put aside at room temperature until you are ready to make bread the next day.
This could be called a starter. What we are doing is growing a culture of yeast. If you did it right, it will be full of bubbles, showing the yeast is working.
If you keep it longer before making bread, it will get sour and make a sour type bread.
By adding this to the recipe, the bread texture will be finer and the bread will keep a lot longer, but only if it doesn't get ate up quick. :o)
This can be added to any bread recipe, just subtract the ingredients from any bread recipe and make it as usual.
The next day, after making the starter, in a large bowl, put in the starter, two cups butter milk, half cup sugar, three eggs, half a cup of butter, salt, and the remaining yeast in the packets.
Mix well with a spoon.
Add a couple cups of flour and again mix well.
Add some more flour and mix well.
Keep adding flour until you can't mix it with a spoon and you'll have to use your hands.
The hard part is getting the mixture from mush to something you can handle and knead.
The exact amount of flour cannot be determined as you add it until it is not too sticky and can be handled.
Too little and it is too sticky to knead and too much flour and it will be very hard to knead.
As you get near the end, add it in small amounts.
As it gets nearer kneading consistency, you can clean the mixture off you hands and should be able to clean up the bowl with the dough mixture.
Put some flour on the counter top and dump the dough on it. Knead it until you get a soft silky texture. When you get tired of kneading, take a rest and clean the bowl and whatever else.
Than, knead it some more, until silky.
At this point you can put some oil in the bowl and throw in the dough and coat with oil and turn it over. Cover with plastic and let it rise to double at room temp. Punch it down and form into whatever you want and let it rise to at least double again and bake.
However, I did not to this. Since we made the first batch of dough on Friday and wanted rolls on Sat., I put the kneaded dough in a large zip lock bag and put it in the fridge and let it rise this way, very slow.
This will impart a different texture and taste to the dough. We like this taste and texture.
The next day, we took the dough out a few hours before we needed the buns, punched it down to get rid of the bubbles that formed, and formed them into peach size balls and put them on a baking sheet about two or three inches apart.
We covered with plastic wrap and let them rise at room temperature, until they had about doubled.
The oven was set to 350 degrees F.
continued in part 2
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