baking bread

Say we were friends and we run into each other tomorrow.  I'd be like, "Hey, so what'd you do last night?"  You'd be like, "Oh, you know, [insert your Friday night activity here].  What'd you do?"  And I'd be like, "Oh nothing, just baked some bread from scratch is all."  And you would fall over in shock.

I'm not a great cook, and honestly I don't even consider myself a cook at all.  I am ashamed to admit how much my husband and I eat fast food or grab something at a convenience store or go out for a meal, so I won't admit to any specifics.  Partially because I don't really have specifics.  We fly by the seats of our pants to some extent.  Anyway, lately I've been trying to cook more dinners at home, and thanks to Pinterest, I've found some really great, easy recipes.  While perusing pins, I came across one that said it was a recipe for making artisan bread with no kneading and no fuss, if I remember correctly.  I LOVE bread.  So artisan bread that doesn't require fuss?  I had to check it out.

And even better, it doesn't require a Kitchenaid stand mixer.  A couple of my friends got Kitchenaid mixers for their weddings, and it seemed that these were the holy grail of wedding presents.  Then I went to register and realized why.  They are freaking expensive!  But I registered for one anyway, even though I had never had a need for one, because I thought that's just one of those things people register for.  Turns out, all my wedding guests obviously know me well enough to know that I have never had a need for a Kitchenaid mixer, and nobody bought us one.  And this has worked out for the best because at this point, I wouldn't know where to put it.  But I do get a little sad when I come across a new recipe, get excited about trying it, and then have my hopes dashed when I read about what I need to do the mixing.  But I digress.

This artisan bread requires no kneading, no fussing, and no Kitchenaid.  And it only needs four ingredients.  Granted, one of them is yeast (duh), which I have never used by myself and possibly not under the supervision of anyone else either.  I feared this would be my downfall.

But I followed the directions, and my dough rose as promised, so it looks like I've succeeded thus far.  The recipe recommends refrigerating the dough overnight, but with some things I tend to be impulsive and impatient, and food is typically one of them.  So I waited the bare minimum of time every step of the way, and now my bread is baking in the oven, smelling pretty good.  My plan is to make some Tastefully Simple Beer Cheese Soup while it's cooling.  I wanted to make a bread bowl, but since I didn't refrigerate the dough, it was so sticky, and I could barely form it into the nice loaf the pictures from the recipe showed.  So it's a bit of a blob, and I'll have to slice it up and dip it instead.  Still good.

The verdict: definitely not a bad first loaf of bread from scratch!  I'm curious to see how the taste and texture will be different tomorrow after it's had more time to cool.  The beer cheese soup was pretty good too, very think and rich though.  I might try to thin that a bit tomorrow (or whenever I have my next bowl).  And obviously this whole experience has made me so proud of myself that I ended my blogging hiatus just to write about it.