Drew's Famous Onion Dill Bread

Drew's Famous Onion Dill Bread

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This recipe was obviously copied from a book book or packet of information about cholesterol.  

I have no idea who Drew is or what a "DAK's Auto Bakery" is.  I enjoyed the bread with dinner.  

I am inspired to defrost some lunch meat so I can have a sandwich tomorrow because this seems like it would be good sandwich bread for a grown-up.

I bake a lot of bread so I buy yeast by the jar not the envelope.  Luckily my jar tells me that 2 1/4 tsp is equivalent to 1 envelope.  Normally I add the yeast into the pan last so it was a little strange to add it first.  I've also acquired the impression that the yeast should not become room-temperature.  However, I didn't think about that before I started and I didn't organize all my ingredients ahead of time so the yeast probably did come to room temperature just like the egg did.  Still - it all seemed to work out okay.

Normally I use bread flour but the recipe didn't specify so I just used regular all-purpose flour.

I bought dill seed just for this recipe.  All the "to be warmed" ingredients fit in a 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup.  

I cut the butter into small pieces and placed it on top.

I stirred it all up and looked underneath to make sure it was mixed well - the beauty of mixing in glass.

My microwave has a "beverage" setting which makes liquids come out just the perfect warm drinking temperature.  So I used that setting for this mixture.

It looked to be a little bubbly around the edges. Was it overheated?  I don't know.  I mixed well.

Dry ingredients are in the pan.  See my egg - coming to room temperature.  Warm ingredients are all mixed up and ready to be dumped in.

I set my machine to the standard cycle, medium bake, 1.5 lb. loaf and pressed start.

I chose the 1.5 lb. loaf setting because that recipe calls for 3 1/2 c. of flour and the larger loaf calls for 4+ cups so I figured 3 1/3 c. flour was close to 3 1/2 so that must be the right level.

The machine began mixing and I began cleaning up.  Oh crap - I forgot to add the egg.  I lifted the lid and dropped it in.  

According to my machine's book the last hour is the actual baking time so when the timer got down to 59 minutes I brushed on melted butter.  I had melted 2 TBSP which was too much - next time I'd melt only 1 TBSP.

The butter seemed to drip down along the sides of the pan.  When there was about 20 minutes left in the baking cycle it started to smell over-done and I worried that the butter had caused it to burn.

Wow!  Normally my 1 1/2 lb. loaves do not even come close to the top edge of the pan, much less go over!

Sometimes my breads will slide right out of the pan and then cool 15 minutes before I slice it.  Sometimes they stick a little and have to cool 5 minutes in the pan before sliding out.
This bread had to cool in the pan first but when it slid out it was browned all over but nothing burnt!

After 15 minutes I always put the bread on a cutting board and take it with a bread knife out to the tailgate of my truck and cut it outside because it makes so many crumbs so it's just easier to let them blow away.

The crumbs that are left on the board after the bread cools and is put away get swept into a freezer bag where they live in the freezer until I need bread crumbs for a recipe.