Back in a previous life, I got into the habit of occasionally making bread in our breadmaker. My favorite thing to do was to load up the 'maker with all sorts of fancy flours and grains with malts and honey and whatnot- start a batch right at bedtime and let it rise for a few hours so that it would finish baking just an hour or so before I needed to wake up. Waking to the smell of fresh baked bread is a good thing. Eating thick, warm, grainy bread with a hot cup of joe ... Yum!

Fast forward 10 years, and I've started making bread again.

This time I don't have a breadmaker and my access to 'fancy' flours are limited, so I hunted around online a bit and found some simple recipes for simple bread. The recipe from which I borrowed most heavily is here on www.instructables.com. I also found a great recipe on YouTube. "Easy Bread".

It turned out delicious! Thick, crunchy crust, soft fluffy inside with nice crumb. The crust has an ever-so-slight sourdough flavor that we loved. The whole batch was devoured by us for dinner- leaving just 3 slices for toast this morning. I didn't snap any photos, but I did record my recipe:

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• a little less than 1/2 Tbl of dry yeast
• about 1 Tbl of salt
• 1.5 cups of very warm water

Note re: the yeast & salt: I just used a regular spoon, and eyeballed it to about half-full. This will surely come back to haunt me later when I can't get the exact same results as my first attempt, but that's what I did.

I put the yeast in the water and let it do whatever dry yeast does for about 5 minutes, in the mean time I mixed the salt and flour and did some dishes.

Then I poured nearly all the water into the flour mixture, which, it turns out, was too wet. You want "shaggy", apparently. I had "gooey". So I added more flour and mixed it up a bit more. Then more floor, more mixing. About 4 times. Mental note: next time add 1 Cup water and see if I need more. I suppose that all that fiddling is almost a little like kneading. Maybe.

Finally satisfied that the texture was acceptable, I covered the bowl with a kitchen towel and left it for about 5 hours (I was aiming for 4, but got distracted).

I broke the dough into 2 chunks, then did the stretch/fold thing from the video on each chunk. I did this in a baking sheet to which I had added olive oil to keep things from sticking (like the instructable). I let the second rise go for about an hour. After the second rise I sliced a line down the center and sprinkled some salt on top (very little).

I then cranked the oven to 500 degrees and added an empty pan near the bottom (for ice, later). I got impatient around 450 and threw the loaves in, as well as a hand-full of ice in th empty pan. I planned to cook 'em for 10 minutes but at around minute 8 I noticed that they were getting a little singed on top so I backed the oven temp to 450 and reset the timer for 10 minutes. At 10, I set the timer to 10 again and reduced the temp to 350, and added some more ice to the pan.

The ice-pan thing is purported to help form a crunchy crust.

Somewhere around minute 4 I pulled the round, small loaf out of its pan and put it right on the rack, to brown the bottom a little extra. The rectangular loaf wouldn't come out of its pan, so I left it alone. Note to self: add a little extra olive oil on pan sides, or try flour, to reduce sticking.

After the final buzzer went off, I pulled one loaf and thumped the bottom with my thumb- it didn't sound quite hollow, so I put everything back into the hot oven for another 3 minutes.

Pulled it out and let it sit for... 1 minute? To "cool". Couldn't wait any longer and cut it open.

Now, there are good smells, then there is the smell of fresh-baked bread from your own oven. I highly recommend it.

The crust was firm and a little salty, surprisingly thick and very dark.

After devouring the first loaf with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, or with butter on it, we were giddy with pleasure.

It comes as very little surprise to me that the foundation of most European cooking is bread. I am still a little surprised that this couldn't-be-simpler recipe produced such a lovely treat.

And on that note: I'm off to bake my second attempt. This time I added a cup of whole wheat flour instead of 1 cup of all-purpose flour, and used a little less water to begin with instead of adding extra flour to firm stuff up. I also let it rise the first time overnight (because I was sleeping). I'll be sure to post up results.

Labels: bread