move over martha

This weekend I decided to tackle #3 on my list, baking a loaf of bread from scratch, one because I have only done one thing on my list so far (did I ever tell you how much of a procrastinator I am?) and second because I knew we would eat it all before it went bad and I wouldn’t have to watch with tears in my eyes as something I had crafted with my own hands went into the trash.

I have actually made bread before, but in a bread machine, which to me is totally way easier, but why would I want to make anything easier on myself? Plus, with the bread machine, which now belongs to my little sister, you only get these tall, rectangular loaves. I wanted “rustic” round loaves. I used a recipe from The Bread Bible, a book I have owned for over a year and done nothing with, except to every once in a while caress the pages lovingly and then put it back on the shelf. Until now! The dough came together way easier than I thought it would, although from the amount of flour on the floor/myself, you would have thought it was a fight to the death. At the last minute as I was shaping the loaves, I decided to throw all caution to the wind and make a baguette. Woah, I know, calm down. 40 minutes later, this is what I pulled out of the oven:

I am pretty much the next Martha Stewart.

I know, I know, people have been making bread since the Stone Age (I wikipedia’d it), no biggie. But baking bread has been on my list of baking fears for years and years so this is totally a big deal to me. There are some improvements I would make, but truth be told, warm out of the oven slathered in strawberry rhubarb jam, this bread is slammin’.