year of bread recipe 3/50: ted bread

Well, I lost my steam a little by developing a cold the second week of the year.  However!  I am feeling better and now back on track with my sewing and bread baking goals.

I'm still on a mission to bake the perfect loaf of sandwich bread before I move on to something else.  So this week, I scoured my cookbook collection (I own only 6 cookbooks, not a lot for someone who likes to cook as much as I do--I think it's because most of my generation, myself included, finds recipes and cooking advice online, right?  There's something really nice about a printed cookbook, though.) for bread recipes.  I landed upon this recipe in The Grit Cookbook which was a gift from my dear friend Casey last Christmas.

It's called Ted Bread and the description says it's great for toast and grilled sandwiches.  It uses a combination of whole wheat and all purpose flours.  I also chose it because it has a rising time of only 40 minutes.  And, because of that, I didn't use my bread maker for any part of this bread!  That's right, I mixed it and kneaded it by hand...and guess what, it was amazingly easy.

This is what it looked like before going into the oven...and this is what it looked like after coming out:

I had a piece of peanut butter toast for breakfast.  It's very tasty!  It's still a little more crumbly than how I envision the perfect sandwich loaf, but I'm thinking it's because I didn't activate the gluten enough while kneading it.  I could also add a little more gluten to the flour next time to help it out.

In all, very good flavor, and I'm sure I'll make it again!  I hope I can visit The Grit restaurant one day next time I'm in Georgia.