elephantstone Wrote:
Mix the water and sugar and, if desired, salt in the big bowl. Add the yeast. Go post a couple of messages to Obner. When you come back, the yeast should have grown to form a stinky scum on the water.
Add flour and stir. At first, it will look like clumps of flour in liquid. Keep stirring and add more flour. Eventually, it will become a sticky, spongy mass.
Dump some flour liberally on your countertop or other horizontal surface. Remove the sticky mass with your hands and plop it onto the flour. Sprinkle flour over the top.
Now comes the part that puts many people off: kneading. For some, this is too much like work. Yet it's a satisfying kind of work. You can imagine it's the face of somebody you don't like. For each step of kneading, push down on the dough with the heels of your hands and spread it out. Then turn it over, sprinkle with flour, and fold it in half. True hackers will recognize that this uses the power of exponentiation; every iteration multiplies the number of layers by two. Twenty times, for about a million layers, is about right. Stop kneading when it stops sticking when you fold it over.
Wash the original bowl. It doesn't matter if it's still a bit wet. Put the kneaded dough into the bowl. Cover it with a damp paper towel. Go off and post some more to Obner while it rises to at least twice the original size. It may take twenty minutes or two hours. Do not continue until it has risen.
When it has risen, punch it down. Yes, use your fists. It should make hissing noises like something from the Sci-Fi channel. Then use your fingers to slap it down, pick it up, and squeeze it. It shouldn't be too sticky at this point, but it it's a little bit sticky, that's OK.
Smear shortening liberally over the inside of the two bread pans. Divide the dough into two and spread each half into one of the bread pans. Cover again with wet paper towels and wait for it to expand again to twice its size.
Smoosh the dough down again, and pinch it so that it has a bit of a crest longitudinal to the pans. Heat the oven to 375 F (190 C). Put the pans in and bake for about 35 to 40 minutes. You can check visually for doneness. If it looks like bread, it is.
Obner: Come for NSFW threads, stay for the food.