bohobe.

i am still coming to grips with the fact that i am a capable cook. i did not grow up in the kitchen. well actually, that's not true. i DID grow up in the kitchen, but i was stealing cookies, not cooking. in the last few years i have not only become comfortable in the kitchen, i have actually become obsessive. pair that with a desire to do less shopping and suddenly i find myself baking our daily bread. whaaaaat?!?! yup-a-roni. like my current shopping reductions it all started during my peace corps service, where i learned how to bake bread on the stovetop. this education was strengthened by my peace corps mom. she quickly seized on my clay wedging skills, transferring them to kneading bread dough. in the process, she also taught me how to make bread in the oven. so now, armed with my limited bread making experience and my overzealous kitchen confidence i decided it was high time i start baking bread. after all, how hard could it be?

i did a little internet searching and found the ny times no-knead bread recipe that was supposed to be foolproof. it was. the first time. the loaf turned out so lovely it was featured in a january post. the second  attempt resulted in a gooey sticky mess that refused to do anything it was supposed to do. i chalked that up to letting the dough sit with a lid over the bowl rather than the requisite plastic wrap. fine fine. as it was an unrecoverable failure i dumped it in the garbage with little fanfare. bye bye yucky dough. after having discovered my plastic wrap "mistake" i confidently started on attempt three. twenty hours later i discover that it too failed. foolproof? either i am a fool, which is certainly possible, or this recipe is not proofed. with a bit of research i have come to the conclusion that my use of bread flour was likely my downfall - apparently when a recipe says "all-purpose flour", you are supposed to actually USE all-purpose flour. right then, no bread flour when making bread. huh? well that makes no sense. i need a recipe that fits in to my logic-based world. after some more internet searching, i opted for a lovely beginner's bread recipe. it does require kneading, but i find this to be a relaxing process. the bonus is that from start to finish only takes about 3 hours. not bad for homemade bread. after three successful loaves of bread, i think this is the recipe for me. i am not yet exactly sure about the economics behind it all, but it seems that i will be able to extract six loaves of bread from a bag of flour, so no matter how you slice it, there is a whole lotta money savings going on. better yet, we are eating good in this neighborhood.