First post go!!!!! Doughn't be afraid.

Welcome to my blog. If you are reading this, then you are going with me on a journey through the mad-capped world of home cookery. That's right, you're going. I don't think it's possible to be charged with kidnapping via blog, but if anyone asks, you know me and everything's cool, alright?

Anyway, I have thought long and hard about how to begin my blog. When the entire culinary world is your palette, where do you begin? I thought about sweet dishes, savory dishes, dishes that are somewhere extraordinarily in between (chicken and waffles ftw!!), but when I got right down to it, I wanted to start with something basic. Something universal that can magically bring family members out of the dark depths of their man-caves and teenage fortresses with its mere smell. I am talking, of course, about bread.

If you're afraid, I understand, but you, my helpless little kitten, have me to guide you. I will take your hand...er...paw...and lead you step-by-step through the dough-making process. Because kittens love making dough, I guess? I don't know, the metaphor was kind of weak to begin with and I lost it. My apologies. The jokes will get better...probably.

First of all, the recipe I'm going to share is a yeast bread. Yeast is really cool to me, because it's a living critter you actually want interacting with your food. Without getting too sciency, I'll give a quick breakdown of what it is. FUNGUS!!! YOU HAVE FUNGUS IN YOUR KITCHEN!!!! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!! But don't really kill it with fire. Your insurance probably doesn't cover that. This fungus has been used for centuries for the process of making bread dough rise, which is called leavening. To do that, they have to be given food to grow on. What do they eat, you may ask? Sugars, which is why they interact so well with flour and sugar. The kind of yeast I (and pretty much every other home cook in the world) use is the dry yeast. They are cheap and widely available in any baking aisle in any grocery store. I always go for the quick activating or super-duper powerful, sho'nuff gonna rise variety. Regular active dry yeast and I have kind of an on again, off again relationship.

So how do you get the yeast to work for you? You wake it up, of course. Yeast requires moisture at a very specific temperature range to activate. I always gauge it by sticking my finger in the liquid (don't worry, I wash it first, or at least lick it clean). Is it warm? Good. Is it uncomfortably warm? Not good. Let it cool. It should feel like your bath water during your "God help you if you bother me" time, because yeast has to be treated gently.

One last point I'll cover before I get into the recipe itself it how to get a feel for good dough. Though it will start as a sticky, goopy mess, when you keep adding your flour, you will eventually get it to the right consistency. You'll just have to trust me on this, because the first time I made bread, my hands had doughy mittens covering them before I got to the point where the dough decided to shape up. Don't lose heart. Just add more flour and try not to touch anything valuable. You'll know you've gotten to the right consistency (or close) when the dough sticks to itself more than it sticks to you. A good dough will have a smooth texture and elasticity when it is gently pulled away from itself a bit. Still not sure you have good dough? Roll it in a ball and smack it. If it feels like a baby's butt, you're good to go.

And on that happy note, here is my fresh basil garlic bread recipe:

Fresh Basil Garlic Bread 

Ingredients:

5 1/2 to oh, let's say 6 1/2 C. flour

1 package of active dry yeast, not couch potato yeast.

2 1/4 C. milk

3 T. sugar. You can make it a little less sweet by using 2 T. sugar, but we both know you don't want to do that.

1 T. margarine. Butter or shortening works. It's your bread. Do what feels right.

1 1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 C. or thereabouts of fresh chopped basil. 

Helpful tip: after rinsing the leaves, dry them between two paper towels to get rid of excess moisture before chopping.

3 cloves minced garlic, more or less to suit your taste

Take 2 1/2 C. of the flour and mix it with the yeast in a bowl so that they can get all friendly. You will want a pretty large bowl for this, but not your biggest bowl. You'll need that later. Get the electric mixer out and have that ready. As a matter of fact, before you do anything else, flour the surface you're going to be using for working the dough, because once you begin you don't want to leave that dough unattended too long. Having everything laid out in advance helps you and keeps the dough from getting bored.

Put the milk, sugar, butter, and salt into a saucepan and warm it slowly. When the butter is almost all melted (which is another handy way to tell the temperature of the mixture that doesn't involve your finger) pour it into the flour mixture. Beat it on low for 30 seconds while scraping the sides of the bowl as best you can. Sounds easy, right? Beat 3 more minutes on high. This helps aerate the mixture and wakes up the yeasty beast contained therein. 

After you've beaten the daylights out of the dough, get a wooden spoon and stir in as much flour as you can. When it is physically impossible to stir any more, dump your sticky dough ball onto the floured surface. Take off your rings unless you want them to be cooked inside the bread. Sprinkle more flour, as well as the basil and garlic, on top of the dough and then smoosh it in with your hands. Yes, smoosh is an advanced cooking term, but ya'll are smart, so I thought I'd use it. Knead the dough and keep adding flour until it's the baby hiney consistency I mentioned earlier.

Remember how I said you'd need your big bowl? Now's the time. Grease that bad boy up and get it ready to go. Take your dough and pat it into a ball. If you're like me, just make it kind of roundish and put it in the bowl. Turn it over once, cover the bowl with a clean kitchen towel and stick it all in the oven. Do not, I repeat, do not turn on the oven. You're giving the dough a draft-free place to rise. Go organize your sock drawer or something for about 45 minutes, at which point your dough should have doubled in size. If you killed your yeast accidentally, it won't rise. Don't worry, this happens. The investigation will mostly be for show and the paperwork is minimal. 

If your dough has risen, punch down right in the middle of the dough. Didn't that feel awesome?
Sorry, but you don't get to do it again. One punch per bread recipe. Dump the dough onto a floured surface, maybe the same one you used earlier, maybe another if you didn't have the gumption to clean the excess dough from the earlier step off the other surface.

Divide the dough in half. Cover it and let it rest for 10 minutes. It's had a rough day, what with being punched and all. Shape the dough into two loaf-like shapes. The bread doesn't know the difference. Ugly bread still tastes good, so don't be afraid to experiment with shaping. Grease a cookie sheet (we don't need no stinkin' loaf pan!) and set the loaves on the sheet. Cover again and put it in the still-not-turned-on oven for about 30 minutes. It should double in size by this time. 

Take the loaves out of the oven. This is very important, because you will want to preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Bake them for 35 minutes, or until they're done. A good way to tell if is to tap the outside. If it sounds hollow, it's done. Inhale as deeply as you want to take in that great smell. Try to let loaves cool below mouth-meltingly hot before you try the first slice.

It's braided because I felt fancy that day.