Papa's Bread (or rolls)

For Thursday's home economics class, we made bread!  This is my dad's recipe.  My dad made bread a lot!  He always made the rolls for any holiday.  I'm pretty sure he took his mother's recipe and added the wheat, molasses, honey, and flax seed. Don't worry, he'll correct me if I'm wrong. My mom always liked to make food healthier, so I'm sure she was behind adding all of those things, and subbing the honey and molasses for regular sugar.  

This bread is dark in color. It actually is not because of the wheat flour, because I use white wheat flour because it gives bread a little bit of a lighter texture.  It is this color because of the molasses.  My grandparents raised their own sorghum and made their own molasses. The molasses that I buy in a store now is darker than their molasses, maybe even called "black strap molasses," which they and my dad would say "isn't fit to eat." 

Don't worry, if you don't have molasses on hand, you can sub with all honey.  If you don't have honey on hand, you can sub with sugar. 

I did not have any flax seed to add either. You can leave that out.  You can make all white bread if you want with this recipe too, leave out the wheat flour.  

I'm too lazy to type up this recipe, so here it is from my cookbook, and I'll add some other notes below. 

Notes/Tips: 

As you can see, this recipe is for rolls, but we made bread. 

Don't heat the water and sweeteners very hot, just hot enough to activate the yeast. You don't want to kill the yeast. 

Before you get to the kneading part, you want to touch the dough with your finger. Does a lot of dough stick to your fingers? If so, add a little more flour.  You keep doing this until you can touch the dough and barely any dough comes off on your fingers, or none at all.  But don't over do it or it will be too dry.  

I don't knead bread by hand anymore.  I make it in my kitchen aid with a bread hook.  Once I get to the kneading part, I turn that sucker up and let it go to town for a while.  Even though kneading dough is pretty stress relieving and builds muscles, I just don't have time for that. 

Where it says raise 20 minutes - I raise until double.  For bread, you punch down, then put into two loaf pans, and raise until double again.  

It raised double the size of the first picture

It raised about double the side

I always brush my bread with butter when it comes out of the oven

I was taught to let bread cool on it's side, I tried to look up the reason why, but I din't find anything.  So, who knows?

This was a great home school lesson, because they were able to see the yeast activated, see how they rise, and eat the finished product, of course. Enjoy!