House Bread

After sending Leo my recipe for House Bread, I got to thinking, why should she be the only one get to taste this terrific bread. So here it goes, folks. You won't see me posting recipes very often; I am that picky.

House Bread

3 C lukewarm water
2 pkgs yeast (4 ½ tsp)
¾ tsp. ginger
1 T salt
2/3 C honey
7 – 7 ½ C white flour
1 C wheat germ

Pour water into large bowl. Add yeast and stir until dissolved. Stir in ginger, salt, honey, wheat germ and about 3 cups of flour. Beat with wooden spoon until smooth, at least 200 rapid beats; then add 4 cups of flour and more, if needed, until dough is stiff and not sticky. On floured board, knead until dough is smooth and elastic (5-8 minutes), adding more flour to eliminate stickiness. Butter palms of hands and put dough into greased ball form. Place in a large bowl to rise, cover with warm, wet towel. Let rise in warm place about an hour until double. Break rise in dough by punching down; then turn out on lightly floured board and shape into two loaves. Lightly grease pans and place loaves in pans. With knife make 3 or 4 slices diagonally across top of loaves. Then let rise again until double (about an hour). Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
For a good crust, place a pan of water on bottom rack of oven. Brush each loaf with melted butter just before placing in oven at 450 degrees. After 7 minutes, reduce heat to 350 degrees and continue baking another 35 minutes for large pans (25 minutes for smaller pans). Remove from oven, remove from pans. Brush again with melted butter. Crust will be very dark brown.

This bread makes wonderful cinnamon toast!