Baking Bread

I decided to bake bread this weekend, not just plain bread, but stuffed broccoli bread. From time to time when we visit family in Connecticut we go to an Italian bakery to get broccoli bread. It is soooo good!!!

I have made bread on many occasions; I even have a bread machine. But this time I decided to make the bread from scratch. I did this about a month ago and it came out great. I am making these decisions on Friday while at work, but as the day wore on and I got more and more busy, I decided with all the other stuff I had to do at home, I would take a short cut and use the frozen bread dough you get at the grocery store. I stopped at the store on the way home and picked up the package of 2 frozen loafs.

The instructions on the package say to let it thaw in the refrigerator overnight. When I got up on Saturday morning I started by cooking the broccoli and sausage to stuff the bread with. As this stuffing was cooling, I took the bread dough and formed two Italian bread shapes. Now my house isn’t all the warm in the winter, so I decided to help the rising cycle by heating my oven to 175 degrees. Once the oven reaches 175 degrees, I shut of the oven and placed the cookie sheet with the dough (covered by a clean towel) on the rack to rise. I went about cleaning the house (everyone else was still asleep) so this was a good time to do it. I went to check on the bread about 2 hours later and found that it has risen beautifully. I went to punch it down and stuff it with the broccoli mixture and noticed that a crust had formed on the top of the bread. Great! I had forgotten to brush the top of the loaves with oil so this would not happen. Now this is the first think you learn in Junior High cooking class. Well I can deal with this, but what I should have done, I didn’t and what I did I should not have. What I should have done was turn the bread over, stuff it from the bottom and seal it up, brush the top with oil and let it rise again. What I did was try to knead the dough and see it the crust would mix in. Well it didn’t. What I got was a mess. I threw the whole lot away. I decided to start over and get more dough when I went grocery shopping.

Well on Sunday and I bought more frozen bread dough. I decided to buy the six loaf bag, figuring I would keep some in the freezer. I put the bag on the side counter while I put away groceries. I started dinner and while it was cooking, I went into the living room to watch a quick show. We ate dinner and did dishes and than I sat down to watch the Oscars. I never even gave the dough a thought………….until I was getting ready for bed. I remembered that I hadn’t put it in the refrigerator and it had thawed out. I figured it would be ok and put it in the fridge for the next day when I could bake it.

It is now Monday morning, I get up to get ready for work. I have to feed the cats and puppy dog. I go to the refrigerator and there it is a big PUFFED up bag of dough! It looks like it is about to explode, for some reason it had begun to rise in the chilly air of the refrigerator. Oh my, oh my I think as I am looking at it. I hope this will be ok for later when I have to bake it. I leave big notes everywhere for everyone to leave the bag alone or else suffer the mess should it explode.

I am home now and just looking at the dough, hoping and praying that when I pop open the bag things will be alright. I have visions of the dough all over the place taking over and growing wild. Here goes, I pop open the bag and the dough just sort of shrinks a little. Kind of disappointing, after all of the fears I had. Oh well, I form the bread loafs after stuffing them and they go for one final rising. I am baking them now, they sure smell good, and I just hope they taste good as smell. Next time I am going to make the bread from scratch, it will be a lot less work!!!!