Sniff.... ssniiiiiiifffff......snrrrrkkkk.... mmmm.......
Does anything smell better than the scent of baking bread wafting through your home?
No. Absolutely nothing. Ok, maybe Taylor Lautner. Or what I imagine Taylor Lautner to smell like..... um, is it ok to have a crush on a 17 year old man-boy-werewolf? Anyway...
This was my first attempt at baking bread! How exciting! I think I've found something that I really want to perfect. Bread making is known to be an intricate and difficult skill to master, but, by god, I will try. I decided to make olive bread because a month or so ago, the boy took me to dinner at a nice restaurant where in the bread basket lay the most amazing piece of bread I had ever eaten. Briny kalamata olives studded a warm, perfectly crunchy on the outside, glutenliciously chewy on the inside, crusty french roll, scented with rosemary, that seriously made me stop midchew to think, "Am I really eating this? Or is this a dream..." 2941 restaurant in Virginia. Highly recommended.
I followed this recipe from Epicurious pretty closely, so I won't repeat the details. The only differences were that I added some finely minced dried rosemary and instead of spraying the oven with water, I filled a cast iron pan with water and placed that on the bottom of the oven when I put the bread in.
Next time, I think I will substitute a little of the room-temp water used in the dough with some brine from the olive jar to increase the olive-y taste. I also recommend only coarsely chopping the olives, and even leaving some intact. I need to learn more about using yeast (I'm a yeast n00b), since my dough didn't rise that much and thus the bubbles on the inside of the bread after it weren't up to par. Also need to somehow find a way to make it more chewy. May try to partially substitute the all purpose flour with a higher gluten content flour. Time to practice practice practice! I think I will use the same bread base and substitute sun dried tomatoes and roasted garlic cloves instead of olives for the next one.... Stay tuned!
Omigahhh.... this looks beautiful. I have the same problems when I bake bread - it is usually too tough/hardtack-like and I give up easily if the first try isn't how I imagine. I read somewhere that old yeast packets won't rise as much, but that's sort of hard to control for when you buy them from the store. Keep truckin. There's a snowstorm right now in Buffalo which means I'm at home as much as possible, simmering & marinating.
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