baguettes

People, if you haven't started making your own bread yet, I want to know what is holding you back! It is SO easy! I still mix up the dough, but on several occasions I have come home to find that will made a loaf for his lunch that day! We haven't bough any bread in the last month for sure! :)

So today with our chicken parmesan I decided to make a baguette, which is just a variation of the original boule bread so make that first.

this was my first time trying a baguette so it didn't look great but is really easy.

• make the dough and allow to rise as normal. 
• before baking, take out the portion of dough, form it into a ball
• then use your hands to stretch it to elongate it, until it is about 2 inches in diameter
• sit it on a pizza peel covered in whole wheat flour.
• rest for 20 minutes
• preheat oven and stone for 20 minutes
• before baking, sprinkle water on top and slash diagonally with a knife.
• add 1 cup water to the boil pan inside the oven
• bake for 20-30 minutes or until it is crusty brown.

I could have let it go longer but needed to put the chicken in! :)

After eating this bread, I realized how much more delicious white bread is than wheat...why does it have ot be like that? :)

Cibatta bread

Well, this is a variation on the extra dough I had from the peasant bread I made earlier, which I realized later when I was reading more of the book, that I actually made what they called light whole wheat bread because I used just the whole wheat flour and not the rye. Anyways... we wanted to use some of the bread for sandwiches, so I used the dough to make cibatta loaves instead.

For the actual recipe and needs look here.
Then follow these directions:

• Preheat the oven to 450 with the stone inside.
• Take out a small ball of the dough. About the size of a baseball maybe.
• Form it into a ball with your hands. 
• Lay it on the flour covered pizza peel and spread the dough into a thin (but more than 3/4th of an inch) rectangle or oval. Let it rest on peel for about 20 minutes.
• Transfer to the stone (you may need to use a spatula to help nudge it off) 
• Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until crust is dark.

Bread, Bread, Bread.

There is this bakery in Japan that makes the most delicious bread. It has these little cubes of cheese baked in at the top which makes it so divine! Well, i decided that I wanted to experiment and see if I could replicate that!

So I pulled out the last of the boule dough I had from the recipe found here. Then I cut up little cubes of mozzarella and stuffed them in the top of the loaf just before putting it in the oven.

Out came, not quite what I expected, but such deliciousness, I had to resist eating the whole thing! :) I knew Will would want some too. :P
This is what deliciousness looks like! The cheese had bubbled over and you could taste it in every bite!

Then I needed to mix up a new batch of bread dough. I did one full batch of the plain boule bread, but did a half batch of herb boule...it is very easy. At the very start the recipe (found here), when you are adding the yeast to the water mix in some herbs too! I did a tsp of dired thyme, and a tsp of fresh rosemary. In the future, I would add more because I don't feel like the taste of either came out enough, but it was still delicious and a nice part of our Italian meal! :)