Sweet Dough Bread

This was one of the first bread recipes that I have made when I started to actually cook meals instead of just throwing together hamburger helper for every  meal. This recipe is quite easy and doesn't require a mixer or any expensive equipment. This recipe is where I learned a very easy method for kneading the bread.

Here are the required ingredients for the bread: bread flour, sugar, salt, eggs, yeast, milk, butter and honey.

Add 3.5 cups of bread flour and mix in your yeast. Rub in a 1/2 stick of softened butter. The butter should NOT be melted.

Its okay if there are lumps of butter at this stage as shown below don't worry about it. Every time I have made it been lumpy at this stage but the kneading will finely incorporate all of it.

Then fold in 3 tablespoons of sugar and 2 teaspoons of salt.

Next add approximately 2 tablespoons of honey.

Then pour in your 120 F cup of milk and your two eggs.

Once all your ingredients are added use your dough scrapper to incorporate all ingredients together until you have a rough dough.

When I poured the dough onto the counter it looked like this. At this stage it will be VERY sticky but after kneading it will all turn out fine. Trust me. I use Richard Bertinet's slap and fold method. However, I only have 2 hands and cannot take a picture of the process. However, there is a nice video of the technique here: http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/video/2008/03/bertinet_sweetdough

This is the dough folded a few times.

After around 2 minutes of kneading.

After 5 - 8 minutes of kneading when the dough is very stretchy and lively at this point.

Place in a lightly floured bowl and allow to rise until doubled inside.

Cover with a damp towel and wait.

The dough after it has doubled in size.

Then, cut the dough in half with the scrapper and place in a lightly greased bread pan.

Allow the bread to rise one last time in the pan.

This is how it should look after rising the final time.

Once risen bake at 350F for 30 minutes or until browned. Then allow to cool and enjoy.