Super Easy Bread Dough & Buns

First of all, I want to say a GIANT thank you to everyone who has read, commented, texted, fb'd and talked to me about my most recent post talking about some issues I've been having recently. I was TRULY blown away by how many of you reached out telling me that you were going through what I was and didn't want to talk about it. It still gets me choked up thinking about it. I am SO blessed to have wonderful people like you in my life, and I cannot express enough my gratitude to you. Much, much LOVE <3

*Wipes away tears*

OK! Moving right along.

We all know that I have a weird fear of working with Yeast. Recently I conqured that fear by trying out some baked doughnuts that turned out AMAZINGLY. Seriously, you need to make these. So, once I made these doughnuts and discovered, yeast is NOT that scary, I thought I'd try making bread! (I was also inspired by my lovely friend Anne who recently embarked on a bread making adventure as well!)

I scoured the internet for an EASY bread dough recipe. Turns out there are about 500,000 of them because bread making is NOT that hard, and I'm just getting myself worked up about nothing. After sifting through all of them for awhile, I found 2 that seemed easy enough, ones that I had the ingredients for AND were from one of my fave food blogs, Something Swanky.

Not only is her blog adorable, her food pictures amazing, she also knows how to describe things in a way that make sense to me! So, I printed off the 2 recipes and went to work!

It was SO easy, and I am SO pleased with the way the dough turned out. I don't have a loaf pan, so I decided to make buns with this instead, but you could really use this dough for pretty much anything!

It is recommended by the author that you use this dough for bread you're planning on eating THAT day, but I brought these for lunch the next day at work (with a little salami, butter, turkey and cheese...yum!), and they still tasted amazing! 

Super Easy Bread Dough

From: Something Swanky's Basically Perfect Bread Dough & Quick Bread Dough

Ingredients:

1 tbsp dry active yeast

1 cup warm water (think bath water temp)

2 tbsp of olive oil or vegetable oil 

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

2 1/2 cups flour

Method:

First, you want to proof the yeast. I don't really know what that means, but apparently, it is VERY important to getting good bread!

To Proof: Put the cup of warm water into a bowl and sprinkle the yeast over top. Then, drizzle the oil and sugar over top the yeast and let sit for about 5 minutes or until it is nice and foamy. 

While this proofing is happening, mix the salt and flour together in a stand mixer bowl. When the yeast is proofed, add to the flour and salt mixture and start kneading(either in the mixer with the dough hook OR by band) until a dough is formed. Continue to knead for about 5-6 minutes more OR until the dough becomes elasticy (I swear, that's a word).

Cover and let rise for about 10 mins.

At this point I decided that I wanted to make buns for lunch the next day (I'm getting REALLY sick of the store bought bread) so I kneaded the dough a little bit more (about 1 mintues worth) and tore off 6 balls of dough and placed them on a parchment lined cookie sheet.

In retrospect, I could have made more like 12 buns, but because I didn't put 2 and 2 together (the dough would double in size), I only made 6. My buns are large, what can I say?

Cover your buns (seriously ladies, no one wants to see that!) and wait until they have DOUBLED in size, very, very important for fluffy buns. For me, it took about 45 mins. You'll want to place them in a warm area to rise (I put mine on the stove while it was warming up).

Preheat oven to 365 degrees F.

Once they have doubled in size (at this point I went HOLY CRAP THOSE ARE HUGE) put them in the oven for about 27-30 mins.

Once the tops are a nice LIGHT golden colour, pull them out and let them cool.

Since I was SO nervous about how these were going to turn out, I cut one open right away and found this:

BEAUTIFUL! They were light, fluffy, flaky and amazing. I put a little butter on while it was still hot and MMM MMM MMM!

So so happy. Like I said, I brought them to work for lunch the next day and they were still fabulous!
You could also put this in a loaf pan, and do the same steps as above OR after the 10 mins are up, make it into a pizza dough! There are MANY options for this dough! All I know is that I need a loaf pan so that I can try making bread!

Enjoy!