Baking bread is one of my favorite things to do. My parents taught me to make bread when I was quite young. The task of kneading bread is one of rhythmic familiarity. I play around making enriched bread like this quite a bit, and I encourage other people to play around and make it yours. Just be sure to use five parts flour: three parts liquid and one tablespoon of yeast and one tsp of salt for every five cups of flour.

1 cup lukewarm water
1 tsp sugar
1 Tbsp. dry yeast
1 1/2 cups milk (*see note below)
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup honey
2 tsp salt
2 cups wheat flour
3 cups white whole wheat or unbleached organic white flour

1. Combine lukewarm water, sugar, and yeast in a glass container and let in proof (sit and bubble) for ten minutes.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine the milk, melted butter, honey, salt, and yeast mixture. Add the wheat flour and mix well.
3. Stir in enough unbleached flour to make the dough stiff enough to turn onto a kneading surface.
4. Knead the dough until it is smooth and elastic. Wheat flour soaks up more liquid so you may not need the whole 3 cups of unbleached flour. One way to tell if you have kneaded long enough is by poking a hole in the dough. The indentation will spring back quickly by about half or a little more.  
5. Place dough in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise until it is doubled in bulk. When you poke an inch hole in it, the indentation should very slowly spring back, but not all the way. If it doesn’t spring back at all, it’s over-proofed.
6. Press as much air out of the dough as you can and then shape it into 2 loaves and place them in greased loaf pans. Let the loaves rise until the dough is above the top of your pans by about an inch.
7. Bake at 375 degrees. I bake my bread until it has reached an internal temperature of 190 F. The loaf should make a hollow thumping sound when it is done.

Rye Bread: Substitute rye flour for wheat flour and dark molasses for honey. Add 2 tablespoons ground caraway seeds.

Vegetarian Loaf: If you want to avoid dairy you can just substitute more water and olive oil for the milk and butter.

*You do not have to scald milk before making bread. Those types of directions come from the days when people were working with raw milk and needed to kill the enzymes in fresh milk that will kill your yeast beasties.