This week is pantry week here at Tummy Treasure.  With Christmas gifts beckoning from the shelves, I thought I could easily spend less on groceries this week to help enable some serious shopping here.  If you’re interested, I have a pantry menu plan up over at A Piece of Home this morning.  Not only am I trying to cook all week exclusively from the pantry, fridge and freezer, but I’m also trying to use up some odds and ends that need to be used.  One of these things was some sour milk.  Normally, a bit of sour milk isn’t a big deal, but in this case, we didn’t go through the milk fast enough, and I had a decent amount left in the gallon- a little over a quart, actually.  Sour milk works well in any recipe calling for buttermilk, so I decided to find a use for this sour milk.  A small portion of it went into a dinner of Smothered Pork Chops, but what I really wanted was to find a baked good to use it in.  Specifically, a yeast bread of some kind.

I found exactly what I wanted, and I have to warn you about this bread.  It’s seriously one of the best loaves of bread to come out of my kitchen.  And I bake good bread.  This Buttermilk and Honey Bread is nothing short of spectacular.  It has a light tang from the sour milk, but not so much of a tang to remind me of sourdough- which I don’t care for.  The texture is fantastic as well- it’s nice and soft, but oh, incredibly chewy.  Yet it’s not too soft, it handles spreads and sandwich duty very well, and I have to say, the one piece of toast I made with it was beyond fantastic.  It’s full of the perfect crumb to hold the perfect amount of butter when warm.  This bread was deemed so good, that I made one batch of two loaves, measure the milk I had left, and then promptly made a second batch to toss in the freezer for this week.   If you’ve been on the prowl for a good, homemade, all-purpose bread, this is your perfect specimen.  I do have plans to experiment with throwing in a touch of white whole wheat the next time I make it, but it was so good as it is, that if I can’t add some whole wheat to it, I’ll be just fine with it.

A spectacular bread, I will be buying buttermilk to make it in the future, or souring my own milk by adding 1 tablespoon of lemon juice (or vinegar) to 1 cup of milk and letting that sit for five minutes.  If you didn’t want to go to the trouble of kneading by hand, you could certainly dump everything into a bowl of a stand mixer.  This dough is so lovely though, kneading by hand is a complete pleasure.

Buttermilk and Honey Bread

3/4 cup lukewarm water (no warmer than 110º)

1 tablespoon dry yeast

1 teaspoon sugar

1 1/2 cups warm buttermilk or sour milk(no warmer than 110º)

3 tablespoons butter, melted

3 tablespoons honey

1 tablespoon salt

5 1/2-6 1/2 cups bread flour

Directions:

In a mixing bowl, combine the warm water, yeast, and teaspoon of sugar.  Let sit for five minutes.

Add buttermilk, butter, honey, salt and 3 cups of the flour to the yeast mixture.

Stir until combined, and then, with a wooden spoon, beat the mixture for 1 minute.

Add flour half a cup at a time, mixing in thoroughly with a wooden spoon before adding more.  When the dough becomes too difficult to work with a spoon, tip out onto a generously floured counter and begin kneading by hand. (Alternately, use a stand mixer.)

Knead for 8 to 10 minutes, adding flour as needed to keep from sticking.  The dough should lose it’s stickiness and still be soft, yet firm to the touch when it’s ready.

Place dough in an oiled bowl, oil the top of the dough, cover the bowl with plastic and let rise for 90 minutes, or until doubled.

Tip the dough out onto your work surface, it will deflate as it tips.  Divide the dough in half and shape into two loaves.  Place dough into greased loaf pans, cover, and let rise for another 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375ºF.

Bake the bread for 40-45 minutes, or until well browned on top.  Remove the bread from the pans to cool completely on a wire rack.

This bread slices fantastically well for sandwiches, and also freezes very nicely.