Annette's Homemade Garlic Bread Take Two!

I posted this on my Tips From a Typical Mom blog, but I wanted to add it to my personal blog too so it would get printed out on in my blog book!

Italian Bread (homemade, but you can purchase from a store and slice)

1 Tablespoon sugar

2 teaspoons salt

2 pkg. active dry yeast

about 5 cups flour

1 tablespoon butter or margarine

1 3/4 cups warm water

extra butter for brushing on

mix 2 cups of flour with all dry ingredients in your mixing bowl (including the yeast). I use my compact Bosch with a bread hook, but you can also use a hand-held mixer. Turn the water from your faucet on to hot and let run until it's hottest temperature. Measure out 1 3/4 cup water and pour into the dry ingredients while the mixer is running, add the tablespoon of margarine or butter (softened). Let mix for about 2 min. Add 1/2 cup more flour and mix for 2 more minutes. Add more flour about 1/2 cup at a time until thick and pulls away from the side of the bowl (about a TOTAL of 5 cups). Dough should be still a little sticky. If you add too much flour, the bread will be too dense. Let the dough hook do it's work for about 10 min. If you don't have a dough hook, you will need to knead the dough for ten minutes by hand. Divide dough in half and roll out to a rectangle. Using more flour if needed. Roll the long side up tightly to make a loaf. Pinch the ends and tuck the ends under. Spray a jelly roll pan (cookie sheet) with non stick cooking spray and transfer the loaf to the pan. Repeat with the second ball of dough. Let rise while the oven preheats to 400 degrees. Baste the dough with olive oil, put in oven and bake for about 20 min, or until just turning brown. Right as you remove from oven, brush with butter, or do what I do, hold the butter stick and rub all over loaf. Let cool for a few minutes and then slice.

Garlic Mixture

3 tablespoons margarine or butter

2 teaspoons chopped garlic from a jar (or fresh garlic, it just doesn't have as much of a concentrated taste)

1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning

2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

1/2 teaspoon garlic salt or powder

Brush on one side of bread and lay face up on sheet. Turn your broiler on to HI. Place directly under broiler and let broil for about 3 min, but WATCH CLOSELY SO IT DOESN'T BURN! I check every minute to see how it's doing, sometimes you need to rotate.

Enjoy!

Pine Valley Picnic at the Ward House Gym?!

Saturday was an adventurous day! It started out at 7:00 A.M. with Thane helping out at the cannery canning peaches and I taking the kids to yard sales. Around 11 I arrived back home with more toys then I had planned! Of course I was looking for stuff for the preschool, and didn't come home with anything useful! We made lunch and waited for Thane to come home. I started laundry and the washing machine decided it wanted to leak more than usual. I had a big mess to clean up and Thane finally called and ordered the part we needed to fix it. (I can't do laundry until Tuesday now, so hopefully no one will get sick before then ;) The kids were at each others necks, and they were driving me CRAZY, so we decided to go and spend some of their energy at the pool. Tait and Sinjin had to sit out for a while as a punishment for fighting earlier in the day. They didn't like that very much.

We came home and got ready to go to our Ward Party out at Pine Valley. (Pine Valley is a 45 min. drive from our home.) We looked at the sky and saw the darkest most ominous clouds I had ever seen. They were deep purple. We got the kids in the car so we could go but we knew there was a strong wind on it's way (we live right in the path of wind storms). We have a broken gate, so we had to go out and try to secure it, and all of a sudden, a huge dust storm blew in!! We closed the kids in the garage and went out to hold the gate and keep it from bending out of shape! After about 30 min. of secureing the gates with rope, we were finally ready to leave. We decided we would still drive up to Pine Valley because it looked like the storm was not headed that way (by this time we were already late for the picnic). We drove all the way there and noticed that all of the ward members were driving the opposite direction!! Back to the Church!! They got rained out! So we turned around and head back home. 1 Hour and 30 Minutes later we arrived at the church (which is located right around the corner from our house :-D ) It was a beautiful drive though. On the way to Pine Valley we pass by Snow Canyon (named that because of the petrified white sand mountains) 2 ancient volcanoes and lava fields. So it was worth the drive. Everything was set up at the church in minutes and we were eating dinner before we new it. It was a lot of fun talking to our friends and the Collards sang a funny song for the bishop, and his face was redder than usual! Once we got home another huge cloud was threatening a lightning storm, but the kids wanted to walk their friends home so we leashed up Sadie and went for a short walk. We were standing out in front of the Hancocks home talking with our friends and our hair started standing up from static electricity so we decided it would be a good idea to get home so we didn't get struck by lightning!! The day ended with a viewing of Twilight. What a great day!