Garlic Bubble Loaf

I make pizza dough. That is my yeast specialty. Every other yeast bread we've made has been spearheaded by Brett (with the exception of flat bread, which tasted suspiciously like pizza dough.) So I was feeling brave the other day and decided to make my own non-pizza yeast bread. I got out Brett's Taste of Home Baking Book and picked out a recipe that sounded delicious and looked fun to eat: Garlic Bubble Loaf.

I carefully measured the milk and added the little bit of water that the recipe called for, and then heated it in the microwave stopping often to check the temperature. I've learned to be meticulous about the temperature of the liquid because that's what gets the yeast going! If it's too cold nothing will happen and if it's too hot it will kill the yeast and, well, nothing will happen. Pizza dough starts out with yeast, sugar, and water because (I realize this is not very technical) the yeast needs something to eat. So I just assumed that the yeast would get the sugar from the milk. I didn't read the recipe very carefully because I was supposed to dissolve the yeast in just the tiny bit of water, not the milk too. But I like my way better, and it turned out fine:)

Mixing the dough and letting it rise for an hour went perfectly, so I punched the dough down (so fun!) and divided it up into twenty four pieces using our bench scraper, which really is a fantastic tool.

I tried to roll each piece into a ball, with minimal success. I'm sure if Brett had been there he would have insisted that I spend more time making perfect spheres, but he wasn't, so I didn't. Then I mixed some melted butter, dried parsley, and garlic powder for dipping. Unfortunately most of the garlic powder just sunk to the bottom. I wonder if I had been more patient if it would have eventually dissolved. Next time. Towards the end of dipping I ran out of butter and was just trying to soak up whatever I could from the dish.

Anyway I dipped each ball and then placed them into a greased loaf pan.

I covered that up and let it rise again.

Then I baked it...

I turned it out of the pan...

And I pulled a ball off for eating! This would be great for a big family-style dinner because there is no need to slice the bread. It just neatly pulls apart.

It was delicious and I was so proud of myself. Brett said that maybe I should be in charge of the bread baking from now on, but I will not let him relinquish his crown just yet.