Recipe Corner: School-Lunch Bread

We make this bread-machine loaf in order to have bread for the week's lunches. It is a simple bread which keeps well enough to use for the whole week. If there's any left over at the end of the week, it becomes garlic bread or croutons as part of a weekend dinner.

Put the following ingredients in the bread-machine loaf pan, in this order. Do not mix; let the machine do it.

1-1/4 cups water
"some" olive oil (probably a few tablespoons)
1 teaspoon salt
4 heaping teaspoons sugar
3-1/2 cups flour (we use the local all-purpose flour)
"some" dry milk powder (probably a few tablespoons)
1 heaping teaspoon yeast

Put this in the bread machine. Use the "French Bread, rapid" setting and the 1-1/2 pound loaf size. On our machine, the time-until-done is 2 hours and 22 minutes. Hit the start button and go away.

Caveats, comments, etc.:

1. We live at a fairly high altitude, above 8000'. People living at other elevations might have different results. In particular, we often need less yeast than we would at a lower elevation. The texture of the final bread is probably a bit different than it would be at a lower elevation. Add similar caveats for our local flour versus someone else's, our low humidity, etc.

2. We will usually monitor the dough for the first 10 minutes or so. Sometimes we need to add a bit of water or a bit of flour, or we have to use the spatula to re-unite stray unmixed ingredients with the main dough blob.

3. We will often remove the dough-mixer thingy from the dough as the last rise begins. But not always. It depends on how busy or absent-minded we are.

4. The variations seem obvious -- use a different oil, use buttermilk powder instead of milk powder, replace part of the all-purpose unbleached white flour with something else, etc.

5. We buy baking yeast in bulk at the local natural-foods stores. We get a little bag for a few dollars. We store it in the refrigerator. It will remain good for at least a year or until it runs out. A package of store-bought yeast is a bit less than a tablespoon of yeast (maybe 2 to 2-1/2 teaspoons), for comparison.

We make a lot of different kinds of bread, both in the bread machine and by hand. This one tastes plain but good, keeps well enough, and is willingly eaten by all family members. Thus it has become the default school lunch bread.