So, I had a much needed victory in the kitchen while it was snowing yesterday. Not only did my second try at this bread look good from the outside...
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| Good looking on the outside! |
But look at the inside!
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| Big airy holes!! |
This is how its supposed to look. And it has a crisp, shattering crust, lots of airy holes, a nice soft crumb and tastes good, too.
I realize now that I made some kind of measuring error in my first sorry boule. This time I measured by weight, which is how I normally bake. Conversions are in the follow-up article about the bread. The dough looked totally different when I measured by weight, so I knew at once that I had made some kind of mistake last week.
So, the verdict is that this recipe is as easy as promised and, when I actually measured correctly, the results were great. I can see myself making this bread often. I do like kneaded breads, but don't always have the time to be home to do all of the rising and punching down in one day. With this bread, I mix the dough one afternoon (it takes 5 minutes including clean up), rise untouched until the next morning, and by lunchtime am taking the bread out of the oven.
Anyway, three cheers for bread. I'm already thinking about all kinds of variations with whole grains and other enhancements.
