Next New Project? Making Bread

I’ve never made bread before. Yes, its true – at 41, I’ve never made bread. What prompted this insane plan? Well, I make soup all the time – but end up buying buns to have with the soup… and I had this utterly insane idea (the day before yesterday) that it might be smart to start baking my own bread and buns to ensure that I am consuming as much healthily made food as possible.

Plus, I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if I could actually bake my own bread???

At Christmas, when I was home, my Mum gave me her old grain grinder thingy (a Bosch something-or-another) and this is part of the reason I want to start baking bread – so I can use the grinder I already have.  This particular batch of bread and buns, though, is made with store bought all purpose flour.  I need to figure out where to buy wheat if I want to make my own flour…

A number of months ago my friend Nan (whose blogs I follow at Yambo (yet another mommy blog) and From Here to Habit in 90 Days) told me about this absolutely amazing cook book that she has called How to Cook Everything – it has two thousand some-odd recipes in it.  It is, in fact, the book I found the granola recipe in.  One of the great things about this particular cook book is that not only does it have the recipes themselves, it has very easy to understand, step-by-step directions in it that are to be followed.

After speaking with my Mum last night, then my brother, I have settled on a no knead kind of bread.  One small complication, though, the bread is cooked in this closed lidded container – the best ones you can get are called made by a company called le Creuset® and they run somewhere in the neighbourhood of $265.00 (Canadian) they are enamelled stainless steel – very solid and heavy – and they, like the good old fashioned cast iron frying pan, are mean to last a lifetime and then some.

And yes, $265 is what I priced one out at today when I was having a look around to see what they cost.

OUCH.

So… no cooking container in hand, I decided that, instead of a loaf of bread (or some buns) that I would make some naan to have with my dinner tonight instead. 

How hard can it be, right? Turns out that, as long as to actually follow the recipe properly, it shouldn’t be all that hard.   I *mostly* followed the recipe properly – screwed up a little where I was supposed to add the water & didn’t half that mentally before I added it to the mixture - so had to add a WHOLE LOT more flour… but when all was said and done, they turned out just fine and were actually pretty tasty if I do say so myself.  Maybe next time, though, I'll make the WHOLE recipe - I bet it will taste even better!

This counts as bread, right?

With love across the waters,