basic white bread

It has been a long time since I last made bread and I am hooked again. This recipe came from Baking with Julia, based on Julia Child's PBS series. It was a rather quick process, only about 2.5 to 3 hours from start to finish including kneading, both rises, and baking. The only difficult part was that because I used straight high-gluten bread flour (instead of a combo of bread and all-purpose), the bread was extremely difficult to knead by hand. The recipe allows the option of doing all the kneading with the dough hook, but I feel that kneading by hand adds a certain uniformity to the crumb and it allows you to more closely monitor how well the gluten is developing. The finished product was a dense, golden loaf, rising to over 4.5 inches and smelling of warm, toasted butter. Perfect for sandwiches or toast with jam and butter.