Bread!

For the past year or so I've been playing around with baking my own bread.  I've always loved good bread but I find it hard to come by here in LA so I thought I'd try my hand at making my own.  Now, it's not nearly the quality I've come to love but its pretty good and a lot of fun to make! Plus, there's something very rewarding about eating your own bread.  I've been exclusively using the recipe from The New York times, entitled "No Knead Bread".

It could not be simpler, to be honest.  You essentially mix the very meager ingredients, leave over night, reform it in the morning, let sit two hours, then bake it for roughly 45 minutes.  That's it.  If you have access to flour, salt, yeast and a pot that can withstand 450 degrees, you're golden.

Above is my first attempt with recipe and it came out surprisingly well. I've tried different variations with it: rosemary-olive oil, brioche style and one time my oven broke so I made little rolls in the toaster oven.  It's always pretty good but since I bake it in a wide bottomed, enamel coated cast iron pot, it comes out a bit thin and crusty, not my favorite. So, this time I baked it in a saucepan, for more bread and less crust; you can see it on the right. It definitely worked but I still didn't love it because the amount of the salt the recipe calls for is not nearly enough.  So while it's good, it could be better and I will continue to improve and tweak, sharing my results with you.  Here's what I made with the most recent loaf:

French Toast, yo!