Baking homemade bread (without a breadmaker!)

It's been a few days since I blogged! We've been super busy with getting ready for the move in 2 weeks and just getting stuff done in general! BUT, I have been baking like a maniac! I made regular white bread AND yesterday I made whole grain bread...both turned out very good! The first time I tried to make the bread though, it was a miserable embarrassment of a failure! My bread didn't rise hardly at all! I still went through and baked it because I figured it wouldn't do anything but take my time. It tasted so-so but it was SO dense! I took a picture of it, but I can't seem to find it. I think it's because there wasn't enough water in the recipe. I tried to use the recipe I posted on my first blog about homemade bread and it definitely didn't work. See below for the new one I tried. It was great! 


Right now, as I'm typing this, I'm making homemade cinnamon rolls for tomorrow morning. I am completely obsessed with dough now and want to make EVERYTHING I can out of dough! I also made homemade tortilla's today for our lunch, and they were awesome! 


This is the white bread:



And the wheat bread:



Here's my recipe. I HIGHLY recommend it! :D If you want to make the whole wheat bread, use the same recipe but pay attention to the PINK text. 


2 Packages active dry yeast (4.5 teaspoons)
3 Tablespoons sugar
2.5 cups warm water (100 degrees F)
1 tablespoon salt
6-6.5 cups of white flour / 2 cups unenriched flour and 4 to 4.5 cups of whole wheat flour


1. Dissolve yeast and sugar in water. 
2. Melt butter. Stir in butter, salt and 2 cups of flour. For whole wheat, stir in the 2 cups of unenriched flour. 
3. Stir in remaining flour 1/2 cup at a time, mixing/beating well with each addition. You may end up using a bit less flour (I think I only used about 6 cups) but once it's slightly sticky, but not caking on your hands, it's ready. This is where you'll add in the whole wheat flour for whole wheat bread. 
4. Spread some flour on the counter and put dough on the counter. Knead and beat for about 8-10 minutes. (At this step, I added some flour into the dough if I noticed it was a bit sticky, which it was). It will feel wonderful at this point. It was at this point that I knew my bread was going to be fabulous! Shape into a ball.
5. Lightly coat a bowl with Olive Oil and put the dough in the bowl, kneading it a bit and turning it around to lightly coat the dough. Cover the bowl with a handtowel for about 45-50 minutes.
6. After the dough has raised, take out and separate it into two parts. Knead each one a bit and roll it out with a rolling pin. Roll the dough into a log and tuck the sides in.
7. Put each "log" of dough into a lightly greased bread tin and cover up for another 30 minutes. (The recipe said 50 minutes but mine was more then ready in 30 minutes).
8. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Turn oven down to 375 at that point and bake for 30 minutes or until top is golden brown.
9. Try not to eat it all at once!!