Cara's Buttermilk Bread 5/5 Spoons

Did you know that toast is my favorite food? Yeah, that's right. I am an immense lover of food and to me nothing is better than two perfectly crispy, crunchy, toasty and buttery pieces of soft, dense bread. It can go wrong obviously like any meal. You could over toast your bread (although I like it pretty dark), use bad butter/butter substitute (I use Earth Balance, it is my favorite) or you could just flat out use the wrong bread. Obviously everyone's toast tastes are a very personal thing. My ideal toast is thick, chewy sourdough bread toasted until dark brown and slathered with Earth Balance.

I stayed up until 2 am last night baking/proofing/caressing Cara's Buttermilk Bread and it was worth every minute of sleep I lost. This is decidedly easy and a great way to use up extra buttermilk if you have it in the fridge. This was not hard, but you do need some time management skills. You need to make sure you have 3 hours (give or take) to make, check, form and bake your bread. It is worth it, trust me. I woke up this morning to an amazing loaf of healthy, homemade bread and TOAST. My god, the toast was splendid. I love knowing exactly what went into that loaf of bread. There are no hidden ingredients or weirdo chemicals I can't pronounce. I think I'm gonna start making a loaf of bread for myself every week instead of buying my regular challah at the grocery store.



(Pictures courtesy of One Hot Stove)

Here are my few tweaks and just general impatient bread maker notes:

-- I used half unbleached all-purpose flour and half whole wheat flour. That's pretty much what I do now for all my dough recipes.
-- I skipped a step and just kneaded it, formed it into a loaf like shape, oiled the pan and let that rise for about 2 1/2 hours. This is instead of step 5 and 6. It worked well and there was less kneading and fooling around with the dough then.
-- When I baked it, I only left it in for about 30 minutes. It says 45 and I think that would be good too, but I wanted my bread to be a bit doughy. And it was, deliciously so.
-- And this was my bad, but I didn't take the bread out of the loaf pan overnight. I set it in the microwave to cool but keep moist but when I took it out this morning, the bottom was a tad soggy. So before you let it cool, take it out of its loaf pan to let it dry out.



I give this recipe:

5/5 Spoons!

If I could give it more I would. I realize I skipped my Vegetarian Taco Tater Tot Casserole, I'll get around to it but this was far more important to me to write about. Hope this finds everyone well!