I made an unholy mess creating the dough, but it's all washable so *meh*. The first "resting" period is only 20 minutes, so that's a perfect amount of time to clean up after myself. Then, it's punch it down and shape the loaves, cover and let it rise for an hour. Once I got the two loaves shaped and ready to sit and rise, it was looking pret-ty darned good, so I took some pictures.
My dear, late husband Bob had decided to get into bread-baking not long before his last illness. Being a true cooking hobbyist, that meant he bought *everything*. I had made bread for decades with just a bowl, some measuring utensils, a spoon, and a board to knead on, not even a bread pan (though I had a couple I'd inherited). He needed all that plus parchment paper, a big oven stone, and a big pizza peel,
not to mention every kind of flour and additive known to man: lecithin, gluten, and several other things I threw out a couple years ago when I realized I'd never be using them. Corn meal, arrowroot flour, sugar cane (?)...the list goes on. The pizza peel and oven stone are right handy items. So is the parchment paper - those risen loaves slid right onto the stone atop the parchment paper and didn't even *think* about deflating.
An hour later I had fresh bread.
I've been making bread by hand for a month or so; my breadmaker paddle has welded itself to its post at the bottom of the pan, and it has to come out to get cleaned, so it's no longer sanitary to use it. I think I'll toss the pan & paddle into the trash, and give the breadmaker to Goodwill or something; they can order replacement pans and paddles but I never have particularly liked using the breadmaker and I'm trying to reduce the amount of Stuff, especially unnecessarily electrical Stuff, so it needs to go and leave me some more space on the counter.
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