Second and third loaves

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Another reason I love bread. It's a community thing - especially with Facebook and such. Make a batch of bread, take some pictures and post. And viola! Plenty of suggestions and tips from the world. After my first attempt at yeast bread, I posted up some pictures and got some useful ideas, like use some starches, honey in the yeast and such. So I encorporated some, did some more reading and rolled up my sleeves for batch two.
The dough waiting to rise to my second batch of bread
For this batch, I let the yeast proof a little longer, using some honey as well as the sugar and some milk in the warm liquid. It went crazy and I had some fabulous foam. I added eggs (forgot to get them to room temperature first) and some different starches to dough when mixing. That all seemed to work well - had a decent rise. Still denser then I wanted, but good. Felt like I was making progress in my attemptes at a nice, crusty loaf.

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On the third try, I added another egg and made sure they were room temperature. I also let the yeast proof in the milk and honey mix, but this time only did one rise. Kneaded dough to smooth and immediatly shaped into my loaf. My idea with that was to capture that initial rise and not disrupt the busy yeast. It worked and I had a loaf the doubled in size. Did not take before and after photos this time, off course.... I also made an apple roll - chopped apples with cinnamon and brown sugar spread on rolled out bread and the wrapped into a circle. That turned out yummy... I did forget the Xanthum gum on this batch, so one more thing to try. I have it all written down this time, so I can attempt to duplicate next time. 

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