I put some warm water in my bread bowl, added the yeast and sugar, and left it to proof. ("Proofing" is when you let the yeast activate and get all foamy)
Mine didn't get too foamy, but it ended up working out fine. I mixed in the flour and salt (and a little more water since my dough was way too dry), floured my butcherblock, and kneaded for eight minutes. The difference between kneading on wood compared to kneading on a laminate counter top was huge. Instead of the dough sticking, the flour worked into the grain and kept the dough perfect.
I put the dough back into my (clean) oiled bread bowl and let it sit. This is what it looked like at first:
After hour and a half the dough had expanded to this:
Big difference, huh? After that I shaped it into a loaf left it on a greased pan for half an hour, then slashed the top and baked it.
Meanwhile, while the bread was rising, I roasted a chicken for our Sunday dinner. Gotta love Fry's 48-cent-per-pound roaster sale. I'm saving the chicken neck and the leftover bones/juices for crockpot stock later this week, and there was plenty of meat left for tomorrow's dinner.
And the bread turned out really well too! If you want to try it here's the recipe. It makes a nice, crusty loaf and it doesn't take all day to make.
The bread is really tasty. It has a nice crust to it. I'm going to be munching on that for a while. Maybe I should try to convince Rachel to make more garlic rosemary margarine. I'm liking the way this blog is going but I'm starting to understand why it's called the blog-o-sphere. In a month or two the food in this blog will make me spherical.
ReplyDeletemake me one.
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