Sunday Baking.

I baked today. I enjoy baking and I like getting my hands into dough, but sometimes it’s like pulling teeth to get me to actually do it. It’s such a time commitment and a kitchen clean-up commitment. I’m doing “Almost No-Knead Bread 2.0” recipe from America’s Test Kitchen. I love those guys – and they have a free podcast that is super informative in addition to their magazine (which is wonderful). They both have the same recipes, just in print or video form and there are lots of handy tidbits of cooking knowledge sprinkled throughout. Anyway, I’m trying to double my baking when I bring myself to do it, that way I hopefully will have enough baked goods to last me until the next time I feel like spending an afternoon getting flour out of my tile countertop.

Here’s the bread after rising overnight waiting to go into the oven. I thought I had completely screwed up one of the loaves as I didn’t do a proper yeast starter and just threw my yeast in with the mixture. But so far it seems like they are both progressing well. The properly yeasted loaf was much more pliant when kneading, but as far as rising size they are almost the same.

Here’s loaf #1 out of the oven. This was the correctly yeasted loaf. Recipe calls to let it cool for 2 hours after baking…but I don’t know if I will last that long. It looks and smells really good and I’m awfully hungry.

I almost made it two hours. Check out the inside. And, yes, it is as yummy as it looks.