Making one's own bread.

I am not a baker. My husband will bake occasionally. We have a nice kitchenaid thing. I hardly ever use it except to assist said hubby in his baking fun around the holidays and for canning escapades.

I have never, ever made bread. I made a pound cake- once- one small lemon pound cake, with the help of an amazing baker ( Denise Jang you know who you are :-)- I tried to replicate what she showed me. I failed.

I have never made bread.

One day this summer my awesome French friend, Michaëla Chevalier, talked about a no-kneed super easy awesome amazing artisan bread she bakes all the time. I'm in debt to her for this one discussion because this week, I did not buy bread- many of the bread bags have plastic lining and the bags can't be recycled, so I will need to make my family's bread. Bread for sandwiches, bread for dinners, bread for rolls....

I checked out the 5 minute artisan bread recipe. There are many, many articles about it- even books! The easiest, super dumbed down article I found was here on a blog named MakeandTakes.com, the post is titled "Warning: Easy Recipe for Homemade Bread".

SUPER EASY it actually was!

All you need is flour, active yeast, coarse salt, cornmeal and water. It literally takes about 3 minutes to prepare, then you let it rise ( the article suggests 2 to 5 hours but I would err on the 5 hours). Then you take it and form a ball with flour on your hands and flour the outside of the ball well and put it on your baking tray. It sits for 30 min. You take a knife and score the top a bit, then you plop it in the oven on a mid rack at 350, and place a small pan of water on a rack underneath it. Close 'er up. 30 minutes later- BREAD!

And not just any bread- actually honest to God really good amazing tasting winner all around bread!

I am so excited! It actually turned out-

And it was good.

The fam ate it all up. And it was easy, I had to try again. This time, before putting it in the oven I took a stab at being 'creative' and patted the top with butter, added a sprinkle of coarse salt and some rosemary I snatched fresh off my rosemary bush in my garden.

And it also came out amazing! The butter made it a slightly darker color that the other loaf but the taste was not too much buttery and the rosemary gave it a nice kick.

I really can't believe how easy this is- I think I can make this a weekly routine for my family- or whenever we want bread.

#Makeyourownbread #EasyArtisanBread #HomemadeBreadrecipe #ZeroWasteRecipe