Bread (2 loaves)

Ingredients:

½ cup warm water
2 ½ cups warmer water (not hot)
~5 cups of flour (variable)—use mixture of white, wheat, rye—whatever you want
1 Tbs. salt (can do less salt if desired)
1-2 Tbs. yeast
¼-½ tsp. sugar
Add sugar and yeast to ½ cup warm water. Mix flour and salt in a large bowl and make a well in the middle. Pour in the 2 ½ cups warmer water. Mix in some of the flour and then add the yeast mixture. Continue mixing in flour a little bit at a time until a good dough is formed—not hard, but should be able to feel something between your fingers when you squeeze it. Put some flour on the counter, dump out dough, knead at least 300 times. You’ll feel it change from a thick batter into an elastic ball of dough. Always keep the flour under the dough when kneading—never add flour on top of the dough. You want a ball that is sticky on the inside, floury on the outside.
Let raise ~30 minutes until roughly double in size, punch down, let raise again. Make into loaves, let raise ~25 minutes (depends how warm it is and how much yeast there is—raises faster with more yeast and in warmer weather). If raises too much there will be a hole under the crust.
Bake:
- @400 for 45 minutes
- @400 for 15 minutes, then at 350 for 30 minutes
- @350/375 for 45-50 minutes
Experiment and use the one that works the best

Variations:

Blue Cheese Pizza

Use Bread recipe given above; roll out like pizza dough, place dough on cookie sheet and sprinkle liberally with blue cheese. Bake until done.