WFMW - Forcing Bread to Rise

I love to bake bread - if you have read much of my postings you will see we do it a lot!

But sometimes I don't have the time or the patience to wait for the bread to rise!

You see, I use active yeast the most because I get great deals on it at Costco, and the recipes generally yield two or more loaves, rather that the breadmachine yeast which generally has recipes that only yield one loaf and is generally much more expensive (and not just because you need more - one tbsp of bread machine yeast generally yields one loaf while 1 tbsp of active yeast will generally yield two loaves.)

So what is a girl to do?

Cheat of course!

I turn my oven on to warm or 200F, and let it run one cycle then turn it off while I am mixing my dough. Then I place my dough in a glass bowl and cover it, and pop it in the oven. Yes, some heat does escape at this point, but that is okay, the point is that the oven is warm, not hot.

Updated to add: A sweet commenter just pointed out that Alton Brown says to include a pan of water at the bottom of your oven when you do this, and we always agree with Alton Brown in kitchen stuff, it is the rule around here!

I find that this cuts the rise time in half, and uses very little extra gas.

This tip also works great in getting your bread to rise when you are running the air conditioning or your house is just a bit on the cool side.

Cheating at bread making...works for me!