Basic Bread Recipe

 The bread that you can purchase near our home is very sweet, almost like a sweet bread rather than the traditional bread I am use to.


Basic Bread Recipe - My friend, Kelly Dumas, taught me how to make an amazing wheat bread. But it isn't very practical for me, here in China. I don't have a wheat grinder and don't know where to purchase wheat to grind.  Coming across this recipe has been wonderful!  I make it every week now. It has been very helpful to have a good easy to mix by hand recipe.  It cooks up nicely every time I make it. I find that the dough rises better with the honey rather than the sugar. I feel it is important to proof the yeast.

Basic Bread Recipe

2 Teaspoons active-dry yeast

1 cup (8oz) warm water

2 Tablespoons (1 oz) butter (melted)

1 cup ( 8 oz ) milk - whole, 2% or skim

2 tablespoons white sugar or 1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon salt

5 1/2 - 6 1/2 cup (1 lb 9oz - 2 lbs 3 oz) flour

1-2 tablespoons vital wheat glutton

1-2 tablespoons dough enhancer

Place the yeast in the warm water with the sugar or honey dissolved. Let it stand for 5 minutes for prove the yeast.

Combine 1 cup of the flour, salt, vital wheat glutton, dough enhancer and add melted butter. Add the yeast mixture and the milk, (this works best when the milk is at room temperature. And use honey instead sugar).  Mix in the remaining flour until the dough sticks together. Then turn it out onto a floured board and add more flour until it becomes smooth and elastic. Place the dough into a greased bowl and let rise until double

Punch the dough down and shape into loaves,  place into greased loaf pans and let rise until it tops the edge of the pans, bake at 350 degrees or 170 c until golden brown and they sound hollow when you tap on the top.  Remove the loaves from the pans to wire racks to cool. Enjoy!

I recently watched an amazing video.  It is such a great time to be alive! The video is called "Your Potential, Your Privileges". I realized I haven't been living up to my privileges as I have gotten casual in my scripture reading. Instead of studying my scriptures, I had fallen into the trap of merely reading them. So I set a goal to study them instead!  To help me study regularly, I have begun sending my daily journal to my children. Below is an example of what I send.

29 Aug 2014

Today I read 1 Nephi chapters 6 & 7, I finally had the answers to a couple of questions that I have had for a long time.  When you children read “The Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites” series, remember when they talked about Nephi’s sisters and I wondered where the references were to the fact that Nephi had sisters?  In fact the Book of Mormon states: “he did travel in the wilderness with his family, which consisted of my mother, Sariah, and my elder brothers, who were Laman, Lemuel, and Sam.” (1 Nephi 2:5), so I always wondered where the author came up with the fact that Nephi had sisters. You guys all tried to convince me he did but I was unbelieving ( I apologize.) Here is a quote from Eratus Snow concerning this matter which I found in “The Book of Mormon Made Easier, Part 1, by David Ridges.

“The Prophet Joseph informed us that the record of Lehi, was contained on the 116 pages that were first translated and subsequently stolen, and of which an abridgement is given us in the first Book of Nephi, which is the record of Nephi individually, he himself being of the lineage Manasseh; but that Ishmael was of the lineage of Ephraim, and that his sons married into Lehis’ family, and Lehi’s sons married Ishmael’s daughters, thus fulfilling the words of Jacob upon Ephraim and Manasseh in the 48th chapter of Genesis, which says: ‘And let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the land’ Thus these descendants of Manasseh and ephraim grew together upon t his American continent...” Elder Erastus Snow (Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. London: Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot. 1854-86: 184)

I can’t explain how cool it is to me to have something concrete to base that on!

I had another questions that I have wondered about for a long time, the issue of the priesthood. What priesthood did they hold?  Again, David Ridge provided a quote that cleared that up for me.

The Nephites were descendants of Joseph. Lehi discovered this when reading the brass plates. He was a descendant of Manasseh, and Ishmael, who accompanied him with his family, was of the tribe of ephraim (Alma 10:3). Therefore there were no Levites who accompanied Lehi to the Western Hemisphere. Under these conditions the Nephites officiated by virtue of the Melchizedek Priesthood from the days of Lehi to the days of the appearance of our Savior among them.:

It is true that Nephi ‘consecrated Jacob and Joseph’ that they should be priests and teachers over the land of the Nephites, but the fact that plural terms priests and teachers were used indicates that this was not a reference to the definite office in the priesthood in either case, but it was a general assignment to teach, direct, and admonish the people. Otherwise the terms priest and teacher would have been given, in the singular…

From these and numerous other passages we learn that it was by the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood that the Nephites administered from the time they left Jerusalem until the time of the coming of Jesus Christ” (Joseph Fielding Smith, Answers to Gospel Questions, 1:25-26)

Now knowing these two facts didn’t make or break my testimony but it did strengthen it, the Lord was aware of the questions I had concerning these matters and made it possible for me to find the answers. I was also struck by how the Lord prepared wives for the Lehi’s family. He has a plan we just need to follow it.