Can Bread

## Book Reference

Sugar Cookie Murder

Do not preheat oven—bread has to rise for several hours before baking.

*This bread recipe is from Cheryl Coombs. She says it's almost foolproof even for somebody who's never had the nerve to bake bread from scratch before.*

### Ingredients

* 1/2 cup butter *(1 stick, 1/4 pound)*
* 2 cups boiling water
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 cup brown sugar
* 1 cup oatmeal *(I used Quaker Oats Quick 1-Minute)*
* two 1/4-ounce packages dry yeast *(any type)*
* 2 eggs
* 4 1/2 cups flour *(approximate measure)*

### Directions

* Do not preheat oven—bread has to rise for several hours before baking.
* Melt butter in a saucepan with the boiling water. Pour it in a bowl. Add the salt, brown sugar, and oatmeal. Stir it all up.
* Add the yeast quickly, before the mixture cools.
* Crack the eggs in a glass and beat them up with a fork. Add them to the bowl and stir thoroughly.
* Add the flour, one cup at a time, until it feels about right for bread dough. *(That's a moisture level midway between muffin batter and cookie dough.)*
* Turn the dough out of the bowl and onto a floured breadboard, or table top. Let it rest a couple of minutes. *(It doesn't need to rest, but you probably do.)*
* Knead the dough, adding flour as it becomes too sticky to work. *(Kneading is just punching it down, and turning it over and folding it a bunch of times. You'll like it—it's therapeutic )* There's no need to knead *(that's a terrible pun!)* any longer than five minutes...just until dough is no longer sticking to your hands like stringy glue.
* Wash your hands, wash the bowl, dry the bowl, and then spray the inside of the bowl with a non-stick spray. Dump the dough inside the bowl and cover it with a moist towel. Set it in a warm *(but not hot)* place to rise until doubled in bulk. *(This will take from one to two hours.)*
* IMPORTANT NOTE: If you don't want to bake your bread today, don't let the dough rise. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator. It can wait up to 12 hours. Then just take it out in the morning, remove the plastic wrap, cover the dough with a damp towel, and set it in a warm place to finish rising.
* Once the dough has doubled in bulk, turn it out onto a floured board again and punch it down. Divide the dough and shape it into loaves, rounds, rolls, little animals, braids, or whatever. Place free-form breads on greased cookie sheets. Place loaves in greased loaf pans. You can even use greased metal coffee cans for rounds and amaze your friends when you give them round sandwiches.
* Cover whatever you've used to contain your dough with the moist towel again and let your creations rise for approximately 45 minutes.
* Preheat the oven to 350°F, rack in the middle position for cookie sheet loaves and loaf pans, or lower for the taller coffee cans.
* If you want a glaze on top of your bread, brush the tops with egg yolk mixed with a little water before you bake.
* Bake large loaves and coffee cans for approximately 60 minutes, 45 minutes for smaller loaves or rounds. Rolls take about 30 minutes.
* Let cool in pans *(or on cookie sheet)* on top of wire rack for 15 minutes, then turn out of pans and cool directly on the wire rack.

## Conversion Charts

See Baking Conversion Chart for non-USA baking conversions.