Day 28: Rising

Instead of buying her bread as usual, Lilly decided to experiment some by making her own loaf of bread! She thought it'd be a fun thing to try and do from scratch, and to see if what she makes can stack up against what she normally buys. Earlier that morning, she got all the needed ingredients she was missing along with a loaf pan, and now she is getting everything set up nice and properly in her kitchen. She read up on how to properly bake bread the other day as well; a relatively simple process that could be easily changed to suit one's tastes. For her recipe, she decided to go with regular bread since this would be her first time baking it! First, she went about proofing the yeast, which was an interesting process in and of itself! After all, the yeast itself rose up and past the surface of the water mixture it was in. From there, she combined everything else that was needed and got to mixing up the dough, and then came the fun part... kneading! Lilly had quite a fun time kneading the dough with how it felt and gave under her fingers. Afterwards, she had to set it in a covered oiled bowl and let it rise for a while. She wasn't sure why letting the dough go through the rising process was so important, but once she set it all aside as instructed, she decided to look it up! Apparently, it all helped contribute to the perfect fluffiness of the end product. When she came back to the kitchen after a bit, she was surprised to see how much the dough had risen! Not only was the process important, but it was also really neat as well! With that all done, she went about punching and shaping the dough before letting it rise a second time in the loaf pan for more shape. Once she could finally put it in the heated oven, she did, and once it was all done and cooled off... she finally tried it. The taste was amazing, in all honesty! It was most certainly on the level of, if not better than, the stuff she normally bought! With a happy smile, she properly stored the loaf of bread, thinking that she might just do this again at some point in the future.