Serves: 5

The first Bake-Off® Contest required only that a minimum of one-half cup of flour be used in every recipe. Almost all the submitted recipes were from "scratch," reflecting the way families had cooked for hundreds of years. Heirloom recipes-those handed down through several generations of a family-were common. Pillsbury asked its earliest Bake-Off® contestants how much time they spent baking for their families every week, and a response of twelve hours was not uncommon. However, the ensuing years brought a change in family life, and people no longer had time to devote to from-scratch yeast breads. Women became busy in ways unimaginable to their grandparents: working, volunteering, shepherding their children to a complex variety of activities. Families relied more and more on mixes and refrigerated dough to provide the building blocks for sophisticated breads, getting them out of the kitchen faster, but still providing the high quality results they desired.

In these pages you'll find breads plain and fancy, sweet and savory, made from scratch and from convenience ingredients, for all occasions and all delicious.

From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

More Recipes from the Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook Cookbook:
04: Breads
Banana-Wheat Quick Bread
Cheddar Thyme Casserole Bread
Cheese-Crusted Flat Bread
Cheese-Filled Parmesan Biscuit Loaves
Chocolate Chunk Pistachio Muffins
Dairyland Date Muffins
Dilly Casserole Bread
Easy Baked Onion Rings
Easy Cheese Batter Bread
Easy English Muffins
Garden Pepper Bread
Golden Gate Snack Bread
Golden Party Loaves
Golden Sesame Loaves
Graham Cracker Brown Bread
Half-Time Spoon Rolls
Honey Granola Bread
Italian Cheese Bread Ring
Lemon Nutmeg Scones
Lemon Raspberry Muffins
Mexican Cilantro Batter Bread
Middleberry Scones
Muffin Mix Buffet Bread
Oat Bran Potato Buns
Old Plantation Rolls
Onion Lover's Twist
Orange-Glazed Tropical Fruit Scones
Pepper Biscuit Pull-Apart
Potato Chive Rolls
Quick Apple Cranberry Pear Muffins
Salsa Bread Olé
Savory Cheese and Scallion Scones
Southwestern Pockets of Cheese Bread
Swedish Whole Wheat Dinner Rolls
The Gaint's Corn Muffins
Tropical Oat Bran Muffins
Whole Wheat Raisin Loaf