Easy white bread

Since I am trying to set a virtuous example for my toddler, I mostly use whole grains in my baking. There are, however, some times in life when only white bread will do: fancy brunches and afternoon tea parties when you want to impress people, not to mention those evenings when you're feeling particularly cold, grouchy and discouraged and just want to eat white bread, darn it! I can easily eat quarter of a loaf of this fresh out of the oven, each wedge topped with a sliver of cold, salty butter, or dunked in a little bowl of olive oil. It's perfectly heavenly.

I first learned to make this kind of bread when I was an undergraduate. Having discovered that a diet of oats, plain macaroni and frozen peas was a little lacking both in nutrition and in deliciousness, I started teaching myself to cook out of various library books. My first attempt at bread was a little odd, but tasted pretty good, so I persisted. Then all my friends found out about it and kept hanging around at my house in the hopes that I'd make some. I like to be liked, even if it's just for my baking, so I've been a big bread baker ever since. This is about the easiest kind of yeast bread there is, and doesn't require any fancy equipment such as bread makers, loaf pans, etc.

Ingredients
1 cup warm water*
2 teaspoons active dried yeast**
2 teaspoons sugar or honey
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (or any other kind of oil; olive tastes best)
2 1/2 to 3 cups bread flour***
Kosher salt, sea salt, or reasonably finely ground rock salt
Dried or fresh rosemary.

Whisk the first three ingredients together in a large bowl. Leave for ten minutes in a warm-ish place, or at least a place where there aren't any cold drafts, until the yeast starts going into fluffy bubbles.

Sprinkle the salt over the mixture and add the olive oil. Give it a stir.

Now add 2 1/2 cups of flour and stir with a wooden spoon to form a ball of sticky dough.

Turn the dough out onto a generously floured counter top and knead the dough**** for around 5 minutes, adding the extra half-cup of flour little by little to stop it sticking to the counter. You know you've kneaded it enough when the dough is smooth and satiny-textured and doesn't stick to the counter or your hands.

Wash and dry your bowl, then coat the inside with a little oil. Place your dough in the bowl, cover the bowl with a clean towel, and leave it in a warm place until the dough has roughly doubled in size. Depending on how warm the warm place is, this can take as little as 30 and as many as 120 minutes. If your oven has a bread proof setting, you can put it in there. Make sure, obviously, that you use a metal or glass bowl if you do this.

When the dough is risen, knead it again briefly to get some of the air out. (It will make a satisfying whoosh.) Shape it into any shape you like: one large flat loaf, two long skinny loaves, lots of little bread rolls, etc. Place it/them on a baking sheet lined with baking paper. Brush the bread with olive oil and sprinkle a few generous pinches of salt and rosemary over the top. (Oregano, basil, or thyme would also be good, or you could stud it with olives, slivers of sundried tomatoes, etc.) Leave the bread to rise again until it's doubled in size. (It doesn't matter if it's not really double. It'll still taste all right.)

Heat your oven to 430 Fahrenheit (220 celsius). Bake the bread for 15-20 minutes or until it's golden on top and slightly golden underneath. Small rolls will bake faster than a large loaf.

If your oven is useless and doesn't cook the undersides very well, you can turn the loaf or loaves over using tongs and bake it for another five minutes until it looks healthier.

You should probably let the bread cool slightly before you and your friends wolf it, but this never really happens around here.

*Lots of bread recipes will tell you sternly to measure the temperature and give you dire warnings about what too-hot or too-cold water will do to your yeast. I have figured out that unless your yeast is several years old, it's virtually impossible to ruin it altogether. If you're worried, aim for water about the temperature of a baby's bath. If you haven't bathed a baby, just think lukewarm.
**Or that fast acting stuff, if you want. It really doesn't matter in this particular recipe.
***Otherwise known as high grade flour or high gluten flour. You can use plain flour and it will still come out fine, but the extra gluten in the bread flour improves the texture of the loaf.
****There is no particular technique to this. Any kind of kneading will do. You can look it up on YouTube if you're really anxious, but you can punch, fold, or squish to your heart's content. It's amazingly cathartic when you're in a bad mood, because you can pretend it's someone's face. If you are exceptionally lazy and dislike scraping bits of sticky dough off your counter-top, you can actually knead it inside the bowl.