And give us this day our home-did bread

Bread. I fucking BAKE IT.

I'll be honest, baking bread from scratch scared the crap out of me. There's yeast. And rising. And kneading. Easily about a dozen things that I could screw up.

And then a friend of mine turned me on to Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.

People, when I say this shit is easy, this SHIT is EASY. Easy like Sunday morning kind of easy. Before you judge and/or attempt, YouTube the video. Watch it. I did all those steps exactly and KAPOW! BREAD!

So let's go.



You will need: bucket, or large tall lidded vessel, flour, water, kosher salt and yeast. (Not giving recipe, the YouTube video does it WAY more justice than I could.)

1.) Toss all that crap into your vessel. Stir until gooey mess.



2.) Use a sturdy spoon, it's quite thick.



3.) Let it chill out on your counter for two hours. It will rise to the occasion.



4.) I did NOT chill my dough after this. It's recommended, but the recipe said you could bake it right away. So I decided to go ahead and do that. Preheat oven WITH pizza stone in it. Make a pound lump of dough and place on mound of cornmeal. Let rest for about 40 minutes.



5.) Dust with flour and slice top artistically.



6.) Bake on stone 450 for 35 with pan of water underneath. Again, their website does it a lot more justice than I could, so I will just recommend that you read the 'back to basics' section and it breaks it down for you.

And theeeeeennnn...

KAPOW!



Bread! We just fucking baked some!

**DO NOT CUT YOUR BREAD UNTIL FULLY COOLED** it keeps the inside from turning gummy.




Now, as an interesting aside, I did some quick and dirty math in regards to cost. My preferred loaf of bread costs more than $3 a loaf. This method...60 cents.

I'll repeat that for the people in the back.

60 CENTS A LOAF!!

Now granted the loafs are small.

BUT, that batch that you made is four pounds of dough. So you make one loaf and can store the rest in your fridge up to two weeks. And when I say that the shaping/baking process is simple I'm totally not yanking your crank. It's hella simple. So in theory something you could pop right in the oven while working on dinner stove top to have for the next day.

You may be asking yourself "Alley, how teh effs does any of this relate to parenthood?" Well, I don't know about you, but I've found having a child to be sort of expensive. And I am trying like hell to nip costs where I can. And 60 cents a loaf for bread? Yes please. Plus, again, I can feed this to her in total confidence that I know exactly what is in it, how fresh it is, who touched it...blah blah blah.

Disclaimer - I am FULLY aware that not everyone has the time in their life to make home-did bread. Doesn't make me better than you that I can. I stay at home all day! I'm sure with better time management I could build an ark in my backyard! I revert back to my previous WTGDDE post when I say I don't want people to feel guilty or bad if they CAN'T do something like this.

But in all seriousness I really recommend this method. I whipped the dough up during nap time and popped it in the oven when Todd got home from work. With no kneading there's very little "My hands are covered in dough, Mommy can't pick you up right now Sweetie!" times.

Next to come...wheat bread topped with oats! Cheese bread! Stay tuned!

Until then, manja bitches!