Soy Free Bread

Remember how I said I don't miss bread? I lied. Over the weekend I realized a piece of bread would be amazing, but since store-bought bread has soy in it (!), I was out of luck. Until today. Ta da:

Baking goes well with study days, and today is a study day. I study in spurts of about 20 minutes (scientific studies have actually proven this is a more efficient way to learn and retain material!), so I had to have something else to do when I wasn't memorizing learning biometrics.

There were a couple of user-related complications, but here's the skinny:

That's all you need! A far cry from the 20+ ingredients list on our whole wheat bread from the store.
Ingredients
2 cups warm water (110-120 Fahrenheit, so as not to kill the yeast)
1/3 cup white sugar (I'm sure sugar in the raw works, but you use what you have, right?)
1.5 tablespoons active dry yeast
1.5 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup canola oil (I use canola because I know it's soy free. If you use vegetable oil, just check the label!)
6 cups bread flour

**An aside: I am not paid for or representing any flour brand. BUT, White Lily is the bomb.You can't buy it here (or anywhere north of Virginia), but we stock up when we go home for visits. And yes, there is a difference.
White Lily is the only flour (that I'm aware of) that uses only Soft Red Winter Wheat. That's a wheat plant variety, and usually flour companies mix different types of wheat together to make their flour. White Lily doesn't. It makes the flour thirstier (i.e. it takes more wet ingredients) but the texture of the finished product is fluffier than with other flours. I know this because we've had to use other flours since moving here when we run out of White Lily (which happened this weekend).
SO - after that long rant - if you are blessed enough to have White Lily flour in a store near you, give a try.

Directions
Dissolve the sugar into the warm water, and then add the yeast. Here's where I went wrong - I only added 1.5 teaspoons of yeast, instead of 1.5 tablespoons. Oh well. Anyway, I whisked it just enough for the yeast to be mixed in, and let it sit for about 20 minutes, until the yeast resembled a creamy foam:

See the foam in the middle of the bowl? I'm sure if I'd added the right amount, there would have been abundant foam. Anyway, add the oil next, while stirring, and then salt. After that I switched to the dough hook:

A KitchenAid mixer is not necessary, but wow is it helpful. Add the flour one cup at a time, and the mixer does the rest. It even forms a little dough ball for you:

Transfer the dough ball into a greased bowl (I used a little more canola oil), coating the entire dough ball with oil, and let it sit for one hour, covered with a damp cloth. I forgot to take a picture after it rose. It did rise, too! Punch it down, and divide the dough ball in half, and put each half into a greased 9X5 loaf pan.

Here's where I knew I went wrong - the dough didn't seem like enough split in half, so I re-combined and made one giant loaf. At this point I thought it was because I'd cut the sugar down (original recipe calls for 2/3 cup sugar, I thought I had taken away the yeast's 'food'). Anyway, let the dough sit in the pan(s) uncovered for 30 minutes, or until the dough has risen 1" above the pan. Mine didn't rise 1" above the pan, but it's clearly because less than half of the necessary amount of yeast was present. Bake 30 minutes at 350 Fahrenheit. Enjoy!

And even with the user error, it is amazing. I know now what real bread is supposed to taste and feel like. I think we're going to start baking bread instead of buying it. Brint did the cost analysis (he's a nerd that way) and it's much more economical to bake vs. buy.