Warm bread on a cold day

I haven't made home-made bread in a long time. Partly because my artisan bread-making was put to a complete standstill when my dutch oven was recalled. That was a great tragedy. Hopefully Martha Stewart comes up with an inexpensive, non-exploding replacement soon.

In the meantime, I'm back to my very basic bread which Joel likes better anyway, and which freezes nicely and is about as easy to make as Kraft mac-n-cheese.

Especially if you have a Kitchenaid and don't have to do any kneading by hand.

I used to really enjoy hand-kneading the dough, but that was back in my pre-Lucy days when I had more time and wasn't chasing down a little mischief-maker while making bread. Ah, multi-tasking.

Here's the recipe:

3 cups all-purpose flour (I do half whole wheat so that it's healthier)

2 tsp. instant yeast

1 1/4 tsp. salt

3 T. sugar

4 T butter

1/4 cup nonfat dry milk

1/3 cup potato flakes

1 1/8 cupes lukewarm water

Combine all ingredients and mix and knead them together until you have a soft, smooth dough. Add more flour or water as needed (I usually have to add more flour). Cover and let rise for 1 hour or until puffy.

Transfer dough to a greased work surface and shape into an 8-inch log. Transfer log to a loaf pan, cover the pan, and let bread rise until the outer edge has risen about 1 inch over the rim, about 1 hour (or 2 hours if you forget about it like I did).

Preheat oven to 350. Uncover pan and bake for 35ish minutes, tent lightly with foil for the final 10-15 minutes if it looks like it's browning too fast.

I usually double that recipe and freeze one loaf for later in the week. This is great sandwich bread, but it also goes great with soup which is what we're doing tonight!