A few weeks ago, I picked up this at a yard sale. It's a Pyrex "Bake a Round" and I had to have it for just $1.00. Of course at the time I'm thinking, "Yeah I can start making my own bread all the time. This is going to be awesome!". I guess these are pretty common to find at yard sales, because they never really caught on when they were first released.
It came with instructions and a few recipes. I love French bread, so I decided to give it a try.
The first thing you do is let your yeast rise. I've never made bread with yeast before, so this was a new experience. It smells so good and it's neat to watch it foam up.
Next came the actual mixing. I don't have a fancy stand mixer, but I do have a hand mixer and it's a good thing too. My mixer has these dough attachments and I really don't think I would have been able to mix this without them. It was tough! I got a real workout between mixing and kneading the dough.
After I got it all mixed up, I let it rise for about 2 hours. It doubles in size and then you get to punch it down to let all the air out. That was fun (I'm easily amused).
It was a bit tricky actually getting it in the tube. Then I had to let it rise another hour or so while in the tube. Then I stuck it in the oven. When it was done, I had a hard time actually getting the loaf out of the tube. I pushed and pulled and finally got it out after running a knife around the edges to loosen it up.
In the end, it turned out pretty good. And look at that, it's round! Although I'm not so sure that I'll be using this thing again, it has peaked my interest in baking bread. I'm anxious to make a loaf in a regular bread pan. If anyone has a bread recipe they'd be willing to share, I'd love it!!!
Neat. It looks like its not that much work...except putting it in the tube looks like it was a pain. My mom used to make banana bread like everyweek for us on summer...we got sick of it so fast. I love the smell of fresh bread though.
ReplyDeletemmm!! what an awesome lucky find. i've never made bread before!
ReplyDelete<3 katherine
current giveaway on of corgis & cocktails
Oh man I can imagine the workout you'll get from that!
ReplyDeleteI've never made a bread from yeast, but I want to try! I make banana bread quite frequently, and sometimes a cinnamon raisin loaf (though I've never quite figured out the trick for getting the raisins to stay suspended in the batter while it bakes....)
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