On Baking Bread

Baking is my absolute favorite kitchen activity. Well, I do like chopping veggies & fruit too but that’s still second to baking. Secretly I hope to enter baking contests when I’m retired. You know the little grandma who bakes the most delicious Blue Ribbon pies, tarts and cakes. I want to be her. My grandchildren will love me. But that’s years and years away so I have plenty of time to practice my craft. Thank goodness.

One of my recent training episodes has involved making homemade bread. From scratch. Not a mix. Not using a bread machine. The old fashioned way. The absolute best book I’ve found on the topic is Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It’s like baking for dummies. And I mean that in the most positive sense.

I used their Master Recipe for the basic Boule and these were my very first loaves. The recipe makes 4 boules which are a little larger than a grapefruit but smaller than a cantaloupe. My shaping needs some work because I had two beautiful loaves and two not so pretty loaves. They were sort of oblong and weird. You can tell in the top photo. But…it was VERY easy and they were gobbled up in lickity split time so I don’t think anyone cared about the shape but me. And seriously, the smell of freshly baked bread is practically an aphrodisiac to everyone. Who could possibly fail with that scent wafting through the house?