Blessing #14

I have a friend who is an amazing cook. Anyone can cook better than me (or at least enjoy it better than me) but this friend can cook and bake and make wonderful creations in the kitchen!!! I have decided to not be jealous of these kind of people anymore-just to be grateful that they exist and that they can lead those of us "culinary challenged" and give us great pointers every once in a while!! Thank you for possessing your talent!

So...my friend had this bread recipe that she called 1 Hour Bread! YEA RIGHT!!!!??? Whatever! I decided to go to a presentation that she was giving and it looked easy enough-but if you knew my bread history-you would know that I do not do bread-or bread doesn't do me-one or the other! I have tried many recipes-including my mother's infamous recipe that she does and none of them have ever worked!!! I am not exaggerating this fact! So...I decided to try my friends recipe and it actually worked!!! I thought it was a fluke and so I tried it again...AGAIN it worked!!! Again and again, I tried it and it continued to work!! Imagine my shock and surprise and with all of these successful attempts, I started trying rolls, pizza crust, cinnamon bread, the focacia bread, etc etc! I make it every week. When I haven't gotten to it yet, and have had to use store bought bread for lunches, my kids complain! They love my bread!!!! I finally have a recipe that is so easy and fast!!! I haven't perfected it to an hour, but I have gotten it down to 1 hour 15 minutes-but it still doesn't take all day!! Thank you friend and thank you Bread Gods for finally smiling down on me! Here is the recipe if any of you are interested...

Blessing #14 My 1 Hour (& 15 minutes) Bread Recipe.

2/3 cup honey or sugar

1/4 cup oil (rounded)

3 T. yeast

5 cups hot water

4 cups Flour

2 T. salt

Additional Flour

Put sugar, oil, and yeast in mixer (Bosch mixer you can do whole recipe, kitchen aide you can only fit 1/2 recipe). Add water and mix. Let sit 3 minutes to activate yeast. Add 4 cups flour and the salt (add salt last-it will kill yeast if you put it n first). Mix well to form a paste. Let raise 7 minutes. Add additional flour until dough pulls from sides of mixer pan (about 4-6 more cups). Mix it for about 4 minutes on high. Place bread in 4 greased loaf pans and set in warm oven (about 175-200 degrees) Let raise until dough is 1 inch over top of pan. This takes about 15-20 minutes. Without taking bread out, change temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 20 minutes.

A fun tip that I love is to spray your counter with Pam when you take dough out of mixer to divide. It makes the dough less sticky and easier to make it into really pretty bread shapes.

The Focacia bread is one of your dough loaves spread into a bottom of 9X13 pan. Dimple the dough, spread liberally with olive oil, sprinkle with dry Italian dressing (about 2/3 package), garlic salt, dill, Parmesan cheese, or whatever else you want or have on hand. Raise for about 10 minutes in warm oven and then bake for the 20 minutes. YUMO!!!!

On Easter, I even made these bunny rolls that my mom always made. Later, I frosted the tails and sprinkled them with coconut. They were delicious!!