A Challenge and a Bit of Heaven

January 14, 2009

It would all be there, with him, with whatever happened next.   "Innocent in Death" by J.D. Robb ♦♦♦♦◊

It seems like I've been spending every other day glued to my puter, but I'm still not carving out time to write a meaningful blog post. So, that all ends.

To hell with meaningful, here's a blog post. (There should be quite a few to follow, because I've got stuff from NOVEMBER that I still haven't shown you!!)

This blog post, however, is not chock-full of FO's or UFO's or words of wisdom. This blog post is to show Bonnie that I apparently canNOT pass up a challenge, even one as heinous as that which she issued.

BEFORE (I can't believe I made this clickable)


AFTER

Quickly moving on before my daughter recognizes the Mother's Day card she made for me in that before picture...

Mr. W. got a book for me for Christmas - Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. I've read about on other blogs and no one's had anything bad to say about it (that I read, at least) and I'm on a bread-making roll... which translates into a mid-section roll, but that's another story...

Anyway, I got the book. I read it cover to cover. It is SO cool. What a clever, clever concept. I might be easily impressed.

So I got some unbleached AP (all-purpose) flour, as it suggests in the book. I made the "Master Recipe" first, as it suggests in the book.

Then the frustration began. Two things. One, it says in one sentence in one place in the whole book that if you're using table salt instead of Kosher salt, you need to decrease the amount by something like 25%. One place.

I forgot, so the dough was a bit on the salty side. (ahem)

Second thing, the bigga deal about this method is that the dough is wet. Really wet. They tell you over and over and over again that this is a wet dough. The problem I ran into is that

I don't know what constitutes WET to the authors.

There weren't pictures, so when it says to sprinkle flour on top of the dough and do this and that with it, I ended up with this:



Actually, this is after the THIRD DAY of adding an extra 1/4 cup of flour and letting it sit overnight. The first two days, it was more like something out of the Three Stooges - with the main characters being Left Hand, Right Hand and Dough.

Finally, I went to You Tube and looked for VIDEOS to see if there was something I was doing wrong. I found all kinds of segments, many of the authors themselves on various morning shows - actually making the bread dough right there.

I learned that the super-sticky stuff was okay - in the videos, the author had gummy hand like I did, they just didn't put those pictures in the book. I also learned that my concept of sprinkling the top with flour was much too timid. It was more like a splat than a sprinkle with the flour.

Off to my kitchen I go. Splat the flour (this is the fourth day and fourth attempt at making a loaf by now), follow the rest of the instructions. The dough smells great, because it's been sourdough-ing up in the refrigerator over the past four days.

I don't think I slashed the loaf deep enough, because it was a bit misshapen when it came out of the oven, but

Oh. My. Goodness.

Heaven on a cutting board. This stuff smelled soooooo good! I tried to continue to follow the instructions in the book and wait until the loaf was fully cooled before trying it, but it was still a smidge warm (to melt the butter, OMG!) when I cut into it.

The rest is history. This is by far, hands down, no doubt about it the absolute best bread I have ever eaten - much less MADE - in my entire life.

There is NO picture because the loaf wasn't around long enough and my hands weren't empty long enough to grab the camera.

Labels: babble, blogging

permalink 3 Comments:

At 1/14/2009 10:16 PM,  bingo~bonnie Babbled Back:  

Congratulatins on dusting your TV. It's been a month or more since I Windexed the TV in the den...and I'm sure it has hand prits all over it b/c of the kidos!!! :P

anyway, I am proud of you for "Gettin 'er DONE" :) You get 15 bonus entries!!! :) thanks for participating in my give-a-way!

and how do you make photos clickable? I've never known what to do...

Thanks. Bonnie

At 1/14/2009 11:59 PM,  Brenda Babbled Back:  

well that wasn't very nice. I now have a craving for hot, fresh baked, bread with butter. Hello! It's zero degrees out there....couldn't you have talked about something I had at home? Like Progresso canned soup? Even if the bread was hot out of the oven, by the time I got it home it would be junk, whaaaaaaa!

At 1/15/2009 8:22 PM,  Darcie Babbled Back:  

See. Now why wouldn't the editors want to include a photo like that in the pages of their cookbook?! ;-) Too funny! Sounds de-lish!

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