Wannabe Baker

Here in Belgium, I can get an awesome variety of loaves varying from multi-grain, seeded, sweet, extra crunchy,  sliced extremely thin, blah blah blah. But, no sourdough. Trust me, I've asked. All of the answers are "wablieft?", which means "what?"...when I ask again in a different way, they respond with "Nee nee nee". Apparently Belgians don't make anything that's remotely similar to sourdough. 

Le Sigh. 

After much debate and doing a fair bit of research, I took the plunge and attempted to make my own bread. I know it's not rocket science to actually make it. Like everyone else who routinely buys their bread from the store, you don't really think about the long process it *can* take to make something from scratch since we're used to the convenience of buying it whenever we feel like it. Since I want sourdough, that's going to take a little bit of time since I need to make the "starter", which involves several days of fermenting yeast before the "sour" flavor actually takes place. So, I figured I'd try making a regular ball of bread (minus the sour) since I picked up some yeast from the store the other day and just wanted to give this a shot. 

All the ingredients you'll need! SUPER simple! Bread flour, salt, yeast and water. I opted to bake my bread in my Le Creuset French oven, but you can definitely bake it in a regular loaf pan. 

After tossing all the ingredients together, I put the dough in a bowl, covered it with saran wrap and had it sit in the warmest part of the kitchen (right above the wall heater) for the day while I was out and about. In total, it sat for roughly eight hours. 

Once it hit the eight hour mark, I took the dough out of the bowl and put it down on the counter (which was prepped with some garlic olive oil)..lightly patted the dough ball with the oil, kneaded it for about five minutes then let it sit for another hour (covered in saran wrap again). In the mean time, I fired up the oven to 450* and had the French oven sitting in there so by the time everything was ready, the dough could be plopped in (while on parchment paper). The French oven WILL be hot while you're doing this, so be very careful! 

I baked it for thirty minutes with the lid on, then fifteen minutes with the lid off and this is how it turned out! I'm over the moon!! 

Eric was my willing guinea pig to try it out and he gave me a very enthusiastic two "thumbs up"! YAY!!

In all honesty, it was VERY easy to make. I mean...ridiculously easy! I think I'll make it a point to make my own bread loafs whenever we need some since it'll be cheaper to just make it myself. Hmmmmm...I think I'll test drive using this for French toast this weekend :)