Success!

I know it's been a while, but I haven't really made anything worth noting. I went home for break, which meant I planned to make meals without going to the grocery store. The next couple weeks will probably be similar. But on to new business: I found a bread recipe that actually rose right. It's not whole wheat, and it's a little bit bland, but it's still quite good (it is homemade bread after all). I found the recipe here. It's a relatively fool-proof recipe and I wish I had started with it. One of the most useful tidbits was the windowpane test to see if you've kneaded your bread enough:

1. After about 5 minutes of kneading, especially when dough feels stretchy, pinch off a small piece and stretch it slowly apart
2. Pulling and rotating it gently to stretch this piece of dough into a thin, translucent membrane
3. If it tears easily, continue kneading a few more minutes and try the test again

It's not too sweet to go with meat, and it certainly isn't super hearty or dense, making peanut butter seem to stick more, plus like I said, it's the first bread that has actually turned out, so I'm a huge fan.