This month’s series of “Tasty Tuesdays” posts will feature, as the title of this post indicates, a randomly selected recipe from “The Essential Amish Cookbook: Everyday Recipes from Farm & Pantry” by Lovina Eicher. By “randomly selected”, I mean that I used a random number generator that I found online, and I used it to get some random numbers, which then corresponded to page numbers in this cookbook. This month, I’ll be featuring the recipes that are found on/near those randomly selected pages numbers. So… I hope you understand my explanation of the process I used to select this month’s featured recipes!
NOTE: Because many of the pages in Lovina’s cookbook featured beautiful photographs of both food and farm life, some of the randomly generated numbers/pages were photographs, so… In this case, I selected the recipe closest to that page number OR the recipe which was pictured in the photograph.
The first recipe I will be featuring is based on the randomly selected number of 34, and it was one of those pages that contained a photograph (of sliced bread, a bowl of what appeared to be strawberry jam, and three butter balls on a plate). Therefore, I selected the recipe closest to this page (and was possibly depicted in the photograph): “Lovina’s Homemade Bread”, and I think it’s a good way to begin this month’s series of “Tasty Tuesdays” posts — by going back to the basics! I’m REALLY looking forward to trying this recipe because all of my experience with “homemade bread” has been with the use of a bread-making machine, which, sadly, no longer works. So, yeah… I’ll be going back to the basics for my future breadmaking efforts. And now, without further ado, here is the first featured “Tasty Tuesdays” recipe of December 2025:
Lovina’s Homemade Bread
2 1/4 teaspoons (1 package) active dry yeast
2 1/2 cups lukewarm water
1/4 cup lard or shortening
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 Tablespoon salt
6 cups bread flour (Lovina uses Robin Hood brand)
Butter, for brushing
Directions
In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water. Stir in lard or shortening, sugar, and salt until well combined. Add the flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until the dough is elastic and doesn’t stick to the sides of the bowl. If it becomes too hard to stir, place on lightly floured surface and knead in the last bit of flour. You may not need to use all 6 cups of flour. Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl, and turn to coat withe oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled in size, about 1 hour. Punch down the dough and let it rise again.
Place the dough on a slightly floured surface and knead for a few minutes. Divide the dough into two portions and place in two greased 9 x 5-inch loaf pans. Let rise again.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes, or until golden brown around the edges. Remove from oven. Brush the tops with butter to keep the crusts from getting hard. Let cool, or slice and serve while still warm.
Here are Lovina’s comments about this recipe:
“I have made a lot of bread recipes, but this is still my favorite. It was the first bread recipe I made. It was the one my mother always used, and she taught me how to make it. Now, as my oldest daughter is married and cooking without Mom around, she says, ‘Mom, it oesn’t look like yours.’ But it takes time to geet the feel of how the dough should be. Sometimes different flours bake differently; it is also important not to have your flour in a cold room, or to freeze it. If you do keep it somewhere cold, bring it to room temperature before using it to make bread, because that can affect how it rises.”
So, there you have it: “Lovina’s Homemade Bread”, the first randomly-selected recipe of December 2025. I’m looking forward to giving it a try, but I am a bit worried about (1) finding a warm place for it to rise since I don’t have a “proving drawer” like the contestants on “The Great British Baking Show” have at their disposal, and (2) my house tends to be cold, so I’m not sure if MY “room temperature” will be the same as Lovina’s. Only time will tell how my first loaf of “Lovina’s Homemade Bread” will turn out for me. I might be like Lovina’s daughter when she said, “…it doesn’t look like yours.” I’ll certainly let you know how my first loaf of HANDMADE bread turns out for me. In the meantime, I’d love to hear about any experiences you many have had with baking bread — either with or without a machine. Looking forward to hearing from you!!