Howdy from New Hampshire

Greetings from New Hampshire,

    Hi, my name is Bob, I'm a native of New Hampshire, the best state in the union.  I'm a hit or miss bread baker who is looking to learn how to get more consistent results with my bread.  

    When I was a child my grandmother always made home made bread, I remember she called it her no knead milk bread.  I do remember her kneading it and my dad does as well, but I'm thinking that she didn't knead it for a long time.  None of us had the mind to really learn from gram how she made her bread, so I don't have the exact recipe she used.  My cousin lived with gram for a couple of years and while he didn't make a great examination of her recipe he was able to give my sister what he remembered about it.  My sister makes a bread that has some of the characteristics I remember in gram's bread but is missing others and I've been trying, through trial and error, to improve upon it.

    Gram's bread wasn't what I would call a sandwich bread, it didn't have that soft spongy texture you see with sandwich bread and was really poor as a sandwich bread, but was fantastic for toast and a nice bread to butter with a meal.  The crumb was a little more open than a sandwich bread, but not as great as a brioche or other artisan bread.  When toasted the crumb had a nice crunch without being too soft or chewy.  The bread had a yeasty smell and flavor which was enhanced with butter.

    My sisters version has a similar smell and flavor to gram's but her bread has a really dense crumb with small bubbles and never gets that mushroom shaped cross section that you see in a sandwich bread.

    I'm hoping that this forum can help me dial in what's missing.  I've been able to get closer to grams bread than my sister, but I haven't been able to do so consistently so I'm hear to learn from you all how to identify my mistakes and correct them.

Cheers

-Bob