a moment of comfort

wow, thanks everyone for your bread-making suggestions! because of the help, this loaf worked much better than the last, and has me on a roll (wow, dorky unintentional pun). the idea of having homemade loaves of bread in the house has always appealed to me, but I was not given a knack for baking. thank goodness for jim lahey and his no-knead revolution.

i was so excited to be able to use our cast iron camping dutch oven for this recipe. i think it made a big difference, and got me all nostalgic for the summer and sleeping outdoors. maybe i'll perfect my bread making skills this winter and try a campfire version during camping season!

for this loaf, i mostly stuck to this recipe which is based on jim lahey's famous ny times no-knead recipe. this video of him on the martha stewart show really helped me out too, so thanks for passing that on allison! there was a bit of discrepancy between the couple recipes i was following about the amount of water, so i started with 1 1/3 of a cup, and kept adding a tablespoon extra at a time. i probably used about 1 1/2 cups total, but it wasn't too hard to figure out how much water was enough. i used half bread flour and half whole wheat, because i sort of prefer whole wheat bread. it was delicious!

after having to smell the bread baking in the oven, it was torture waiting that last hour for the bread to cool. but my goodness, was it ever worth the wait. mmmm... with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar... i think it's time for another slice!