Home freshener! (Bread)

I love making bread. I absolutely love it. I love baking in general, but bread is possibly my favourite. I love the smell of the yeast; I love the texture of the dough; I love kneading (although one of my recipes cuts that out entirely); I love the way it makes my whole house smell amazing. That smell in particular is so fantastic. Even if its high summer, it makes me feel all cozy... Actually, although I'm overjoyed at the fact that summer appears to be coming back after all, I will miss being able to bake with impunity. I have a second stove in the basement that I use in the summer, but that's going to be sad this year as I now have my amazing new stove...

I used to have a bread maker; Ryan bought it for me years ago. It was great, and I used it a lot. In fact, I used it up! One day, while I was making a batch of bread, I noticed that it sounded... Odd. At the end of the cycle I went to get my lovely bread and instead found a burnt mass of unmixed ingredients. It turned out that the stirring paddle/mechanism had rusted into a solid lump. Not a good thing, I must say. So I started doing it by hand. Well, I cheat. I do use my mixer with a dough hook. But I still consider that by hand.

I have found a few recipes that I really like, but I'm always looking for new ones. The one I used today makes, I'd say, the best plain bread around. It is such good toast. mmm...toast... I've also found that bulk barn carries really nice flour. I just love it. And since I bake so much I appreciate being able to buy in bulk. The staff here sometimes give me funny looks, but I think some of them are starting to recognize me.

Regardless, I'm not posting a tutorial today, instead I'm going to post a video I made a while back of me making this bread. The only difference today is that i used 2 cups whole wheat flour in place of some of the white. The original recipe is here