The Perfect White Loaf & Rolls!!

With England being covered in white over the weekend I used it to my advantage and baked! 

As I said in my last post I am starting to be a lot more concerned about what's in my food and what I'm feeding my kids. So, I thought I'd give bread a go! I went straight to Nick Malgieri's Bake! 

Over Christmas I tried his Tiger Rolls and had good results. So, it was a no brain-er to go back to his book! 

So, first off I just want to say bread is pretty easy to make if you follow the "rules" and you have time for all the rising. Second I want to say if you are taking the time to make bread you might as well make double batches as bread freezes well! 

I only owned 1 loaf tin and never thought twice about it's size. The instructions from Nick say it should rise just above the rim. Mine didn't. It was then I thought  twice about the size of my tin. It's a 2lb loaf tin not a 1lb. Oops! As you see from the pictures it doesn't look perfect, but it still turned out nice! 

The other lesson I have learned from this is read through the whole recipe even the variations. When I started I was worrying about how I was going to bake 2 loaves with only 1 tin (which was the wrong size) and in the variations it says you can use half of a batch for rolls. So, that's what I did. We used them for ham & cheese sandwiches to go with homemade root vegetable soup! A perfect dinner for a cold night! 

I'm going to be trying other breads to find one that is easy and tasty enough to make on a regular basis. Therefore I'm not going to share the recipe with you on here at this time. Once I've found "the one" I will post the recipe! Does anyone have any suggestions for bread? Any tried and true recipes? 

notes: it looks like Bake! is only available from other sellers on Amazon. I wouldn't doubt the recipe I used for this loaf or something similar would be in his new book Bread! (it's on my wish list!) While I was getting supplies at my local store I picked up a couple of 1lb loaf tins! Now I'm better prepared! :0)