okay, i know what you are thinking.
"bread?!...i thought we were only posting simple recipes for two."
you can do this recipe. promise. its only 7 ingredients and it only takes 6 minutes to combine them. and the results are well worth the whole process. there is nothing like hot, fresh, homeade bread. tastes best with butter, butter and honey, or peanut butter. also good for grilled cheese, paninis, etc in the days following. it does make 3 loaves so if you won't consume that much bread in about 3-4 days, i suggest freezing a loaf or giving one away. also, you can buy wheat flour in a grocery store or in bulk (sunflower market in orem has it). if you get really into it, then you can buy a wheat grinder and make your own wheat flour--this was actually one of my bridal gifts and i totally love it.
Victoria’s Six-Minute Magic Bread
Put the following into the bowl of your Kitchenaid or Bosch mixer, in this order:
2/3 cup sugar or honey (either works fine)
2 tsp. salt
3 cups hot water from the tap
1 cup canola oil (or butter–if it is cold, cut it up first)
4 cups whole wheat flour (from about 2 cups whole wheat)
6 cups white flour
2 tbsp. active dry yeast
Mix all ingredients in your mixer using the dough hook attachment for six minutes. Meanwhile, warm your oven slightly (I turn mine on for 2-3 minutes). Check your dough. It should be pulling away from the sides of the bowl. If it is too sticky, add a little flour, until it comes to the right consistency. Don’t make it too stiff, or your bread will be dry.
Butter a large bowl. Turn dough into the buttered bowl, and then turn it over to coat both sides in butter. Cover with a kitchen towel and place in your warm oven (make sure the oven is turned off, and that it is not too hot... you don’t want to kill the yeast). Set the timer for one hour and twenty minutes.
After one hour and twenty minutes, form the dough into three loaves and place in lightly buttered loaf pans. The way I like to form my loaves is to press them with my hands into a rectangle that is the width of the long end of the bread pan (about 9 inches) and about twice that long. Then I roll the rectangle up, making sure to leave no air pockets (which turn into holes in your bread), and placing the roll in the pan seam-side down. One advantage of this method is that if you want to add a sprinkle of cinnamon and brown sugar before rolling it up, you can do so. This makes really beautiful round-top bread.
Place the loaves back in the warm oven and cover them with the towel again. Set the timer for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, take the towel off. The loaves should be rounded about an inch above the top of the loaf pans. If they are not, give them another five minutes. Then turn on the oven to 350 degrees (you don’t need to preheat). Set the timer for 30 minutes again. After 30 minutes, remove the bread from the oven, and immediately turn the loaves out of the pans and place upright on a cookie cooling rack to cool completely. Any loaves that you don’t eat immediately hot from the oven with butter and honey, you can place in plastic bags, but only when they are completely cool.
To make white bread, rather than wheat, just use white flour in place of the wheat. You might adjust the second rise time to about 25 minutes, as the white loaves tend to rise a little faster. You may also use just a pinch less yeast for white loaves.
