cookbook_challenge | Walter Sands Basic White Bread

I've had the King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook since it came out in 2003. I like it because not only are the recipes clear and straightforward, they explain things like what the ratio of flour to liquid is for basic bread, how to vary it, and how different recipes relate to one another. I'd made several things from it, but never plain, everyday white bread. I've been baking bread for better than 50 years (I had to stand on a stool when my grandmother first taught me), so if I want plain bread I just make it. No recipe, and very little measuring. I measure the liquid to set how much dough I'll end up with, and the yeast because I gave up on packets in my teens. After that, it's mark one eyeball.

But my son, who has sensory issues and has had a lot of trouble with cooking, has been watching Gordon Ramsey and Bingeing with Babish religiously, and he decided that it was time to make his own bread. Specifically, he wanted to make small loaves he could use as bread bowls.

So I went in search of a recipe, and found this one in the aforementioned cookbook, then looked it up on their website. My son made it, with mom's oversight and demonstrations of things like kneading and shaping. It came out really well; about 75% of the batch vanished the day it was made.

In the book version, the powdered milk is listed as optional. I left it out, because I didn't have any. I also used olive oil as the fat, and honey for sweetener and yeast-booster. Other than that, we followed the recipe. I did note that it took 5 cups of flour rather than the listed 6, but that amount of variation isn't unusual in bread, and has mostly to do with the lack of humidity in a heated home in winter.