Sunday, November 20, 2011

Homemade artisan bread for $0.40 a loaf

http://pinterest.com/pin/32791903506374981/

I love bread.  

It's more than a normal love, it's a deeply rooted love.  Love that sometimes I embrace a little more, ok a lot more, than me or my scale or my blood sugar would appreciate.  

However, the main things keeping me from throwing myself fully in the love that dare not speak it's name was the hassle and stress of making my own and the cost of buying it at the store.  

This recipe changed all that.  

I've already added new pants to my Christmas list for santa. 

Overall Comments:  Well, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  When something is so cheap and easy and delicious that you find yourself making tons and tons of it, you will OD on it very quickly and then you find yourself with a loaf sitting on your counter top for a couple of days without being touched.  

It's super easy and super cheap.  The recipe calls for a pizza stone and a pizza peel and all of this stuff, but I just used a regular cookie sheet pan.   I just sprayed it with a little pam, sprinkled some cornmeal on the pan and placed the loaf.  I do have a couple pieces of advice. 
  1. When you think it's done, let it go another minute.  I am so worried about burning it, I've ended up with some raw dough in the middle.  
  2. Even though they say to let it cool, you really need to crack into it warm once just to really enjoy the fruits of your labor. 
  3. If the crust is too hard for your liking, rub some butter on the outside when you pull it out of the oven.  This will seep in and keep it from being too hard of a crust. 
  4. TRES important!! The pan you keep in the bottom of your oven to pour your water in, creating the steam?  Yeah, don't use your pyrex dish.  Cold water + 450 degree glass = explosion.  I didn't do it, but there are those out there that have.  NO GOOD.  
  5. Don't forget your dough on the counter for like 4 hours or it will continue to rise and grow, overflowing your container, spreading over your counter and creating a (hilarious) and sticky mess. 
Cost (approximately): $2.00 for the bag of flour and I honestly don't know how much for the yeast.  I had some bread machine yeast in my cupboard.  It actually had "expired" but still raises just fine.  
Would I make it again?  Would I?  Hell yes.  It's delicious! 
What does the Mr think?  "Who doesn't like fresh bread?" 



No comments:

Post a Comment