The Mother Loaf

This weekend, I went on a bread making frenzy. On Friday night, I made two batches of dough which eventually became a loaf of white bread, a pan of cinnamon buns and four loaves of french bread. I baked the first loaf of white bread right away on Friday night, while I let the cinnamon buns rest over night to be fresh on Saturday morning. I also left the french bread dough overnight, so that I could bake it on Saturday evening. I wanted it to be as fresh as possible for Sunday's lunch. Also, I had a feeling if I baked it all on Friday night, it wouldn't be around anymore by Sunday. I think this was a good choice considering the first loaf of white bread was GONE within five minutes of coming out of the oven. Evan's sister, B, and her family were visiting this weekend along with Evan's cousin, M, so we all enjoyed that yummy treat before bed.

We ate the cinnamon buns with cream cheese frosting (see frosting tip below) on Saturday morning as an accompaniment to the bacon, eggs and hashbrowns that the guys made. The french bread was baked on Saturday night and enjoyed with delicious curried chicken made by M & L on Sunday after church.

Last night, I decided to go ahead and make another two batches of dough so I could put some of the bread in the freezer. I wasn't sure what to do with the white bread recipe because it makes enough dough for two loaves. The problem is, I only have one loaf pan. This works okay when I split the dough in two to make one loaf of bread and use the rest of the dough for something else (like I did with the cinnamon buns on Friday), or when I have time to bake the first loaf, let it cool, put the second loaf in the pan, let it rise and then bake it. But, this process takes a LONG time, and last night I didn't have the time or patience to wait to do that and I also didn't want to make anything else with the dough. So, I got creative. I decided that although the recipe yields two loaves, I could probably just make one because my loaf pan is quite a bit bigger than the average pan. When I divide the dough to make one loaf, it only fills the pan about halfway, with lots of room to spare. That being so, I figured that using all the dough would just fill the pan completely and I'd have one larger loaf.

So, how did that work out? Meet the mother loaf.




This loaf of bread turned out to look like a smurf on a bad hair day. I couldn't even let it sit to cool on the cooling rack because it kept toppling over, I think it was a BIT top heavy! I guess I will just have to invest in a second loaf pan.

I also wanted to share this picture of Evan and our niece, O, "baking bread" together while Auntie was busy making hers. So cute!


Frosting Tip: If you are using store bought icing (which I was) you can have less calories per serving and also make the frosting go farther. Just empty the contents of the container into a bowl and beat it with an electric mixer for about 5-10 minutes. This makes the icing very fluffy and doubles the size. After frosting the entire pan of cinnamon buns, I put the leftover "fluffed" icing back in the container and it was almost full still.