a bread making success!

After many semi-successful batches of bread, I've finally created a truly magnificent batch of home-made honey wheat sourdough bread!! The finished product that you see below was positively the best batch I've created yet, despite all the odds working against me: the lack of counter space in our room (there is none), the highly questionable oven in the lounge (it takes 30 minutes to pre-heat), and the inhospitable rising conditions (our frigid, dry air conditioned room). When it came out of the oven, it smelled SO heavenly.

Upon slicing it the crusty outer layer and the soft airy texture on the inside made our mouths water. My roommate and I immediately spread a little butter on it, and quickly devoured 1/2 of the loaf. When we felt we'd had enough, I wrapped up the second 1/2, and put it away for later. (Homemade bread makes for a tasty breakfast in the morning). The second loaf, we took to a friends apartment for a movie night snack. It was a huge hit! I can't wait to try another batch! (Though my roommate is getting tired of the same bread every time.) "Can't you make anything other than sourdough?" I'm going to have to work on that one.

adventures in bread cont...

I'm back! After finally getting all moved in, I thought I'd take some time and report how the breadmaking was going. After my first smallish round loaf of bread (made with mostly white flour) I made a second batch with more wheat flour, and decided to allow more time for it to rise the second time. unfortunately, I forgot about it and let it rise too long. Thus, these lumpy dense, hat-looking loaves resulted. Try, try, again.

The third batch of bread came out 1092849 times better than the first!!! I used a mix of wheat and white flour again, I let it rise just long enough to give it a nice texture, but ALAS...I forgot to add salt, oil, and honey. So it looked picture perfect, but tasted...not so delicious. It went down a whole lot easier with butter and jam. (In case you were wondering butter and jam make just about any loaf of bread edible, unless it's too hard to chew, or too moldy to stomach)

I went with homemade strawberry jam.