I made bread and it actually turned out like bread!

Last night I made a big Cobb salad for us for dinner, my kids are amazing like that, they love veggies and salad! I decided I would try to make a loaf of bread since I have never really experimented with making bread. I found a great recipe on one of my favorite blogs "For the Love of Cooking", and I decided to try it. The only difference was I do not have a bread machine, so I just kneaded the dough for a little while, and then sprayed a bowl with cooking spray, put the dough ball in the bowl and covered it with a towel for an hour. After the hour I took it out, kneaded it again on a floured surface and continued on with the directions. Here is the recipe CrustyItalianBread

Crusty Italian Bread

2/3 cup of warm water
3/4 tsp olive oil
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp brown sugar
2 cups of flour
1 1/8 tsp yeast
cornmeal
egg

Put water, olive oil, salt, brown sugar, flour and yeast into bowl or bread machine in that order. Mix (on dough setting) or with mixer until well blended.

Deflate the dough and turn it out onto a floured surface. Roll dough into a rectangle then roll up jelly roll style and pinch the seam closed. Place loaf onto a cornmeal sprinkled baking pan. Cover with a cloth and let rise until doubled in size, about 40 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Beat egg and brush over loaf. Carefully slice a long single cut down the center of the loaf.

Bake for 30-35 minutes or until golden brown and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.


*My loaf was smaller and kind of dense, but to my surprise it smelled like fresh bread and it tasted like fresh bread. I am looking forward to trying more bread recipes in the future, it was very fun and not overwhelming like I thought it would be!