The Essential White Loaf

I know in my earlier post (My Brown Bread), I said that I will never attempt to manually knead bread. Well.....if you know me, you'll know that I don't give up that easily. I'm a control-freak to a certain degree and to realise that I'll always need a machine to knead my bread? Not good. So, on Sunday night after dinner, the MOTH suggested that he'll take a drive out to buy some dinner rolls for breakfast on Monday morning. That's like telling me I'm uptight. I react and I react quickly. Out came the mixing bowl, measured the flour and started mixing and kneading. I didn't use all 500g of white flour. Halved it with wholemeal flour...couldn't resist sneaking in fibre into the kids' diet. I also used only water instead of potato water. I kneaded, and kneaded. It's actually quite therapeutic and while I was at it, I suddenly remembered what a French chef said in a magazine about doing the window test! That's it! That's what I forgot to do the last time. To know if your bread dough has had enough of kneading, stretch a piece of the dough. It should not tear when stretched out. It'll be like a thin membrane. After a good 20 minutes or so of muscle-work, it was good. Left it for 30 minutes to rise, shaped it into rolls, rested it again and baked the rolls for 15 minutes. The bread was perfect. Soft crust with tender crumbs.