Glorious Bread

Dear bread,

I love you.

~ stephchows

Yes yes by now you all know about my lustful relationship with bread. I can't help it! I mean how do you say no to a hot yeastfullydelicious crusty hunk of bread? You don't... you just don't. You say thank you and savor every hot wonderful bite.

Have you heard about the book Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day? They also have a blog. I took it out from the library the other day (I'm a library ho, it's true, I took out 7 cookbooks the other day... don't hate on me... it's called resourceful) Anyway, the book is awesome! I was a little hesitant, ingredient: flour, water, salt, yeast. It's no kneed. Dump it all together, toss to incorporate, let it rise, then chuck it in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. You do still have to let the dough rise before it goes into the oven (unless you are making pitas) and they have all different ways of shaping and adding stuff to it. (get the recipe on their blog here.)

I made the straight up, grab out hunk of dough, shape it, let it rest 40 minutes, slash it a couple times, toss it on a preheated baking stone, toss in some water to steam it, DONE. Thirty minutes later, this beautiful crusty beauty came out of the oven... and OH how I enjoyed it. Perfect crust, amazingly tended guts... DELICIOUSLY GLORIOUS!

Yeah... I ate the whole little loaf... half with a nice big bowl of soup (come back tomorrow to see what kind) and then I ate the other half straight up plain. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to go to a spinning class to work off said glorious bread :D

*drool*