Easiest Bread

Maybe it's wierd that we post so much about bread. But this new recipe that Gina found is so easy! You cook the bread in a dutch oven.
Almost No-Knead Bread from Cook's Illustrated

3 cups (15 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon instant yeast

1 1/2 teaspoons table salt

generous 3/4 cup (7 oz) water, room temperature

generous 1/4 cup (3 oz) mild flavored lager *we used Yuengling! or you can use fake beer!

1 tablespoon white vinegar

1. Whisk flour, yeast, and salt together. Add water, beer, and vinegar. Stir with a rubber spatula until a shaggy dough forms. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 8-18 hours. *or 20... Gina forgot about it while she was out shopping

2. Lay a sheet of parchment paper in a 10 inch skillet and spray the paper with cooking spray. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface 10-15 times *that's like 30 seconds yall, this is so easy! Shape into a ball and place it on the parchment in the skillet. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 2 hours. It will rise into a nice shape because of the shape of the skillet underneath.

3. About 30 minutes before baking move your oven rack to the very bottom, place your cast iron dutch oven pot and lid in there to preheat, and heat the oven to 500. Flour the top of the dough and make one slice in the top.

4. When the oven is ready, pick up the dough using the parchment paper and lower it in to your hot dutch oven. Put the lid on the pot (let excess parchment hang over the pot edge) and lower the oven temperature to 425. Bake for 30 minutes.

5. Remove the lid from the pot and continue baking for 20-30 minutes. Then remove from oven, lifting the bread out by the edges of the parchment paper, and let it cool on a wire rack for 2 hours.

We eat a lot of bread

Today Gina realized that she could double her usual batch of bread and make six loaves instead of three. This should last us a few days.
Parisian Daily Bread from this awesome cookbook.

Zopf

Gina is on a quest to create bread that reminds Thomas of home. This bread was a big hit yesterday when it was fresh out of the oven. Thomas calls it Zopf.

Dreikornbrot

This bread was an adventure! It required the use of a suspiciously moldy-looking rye sourdough culture that sat out on the kitchen counter for a week and a half. And lots and lots of seeds.
"....straight from a bakery in Germany." -an anonymous taster

What dissertation?

Gina's awesome sister gave her a sewing machine for her birthday! Thanks seester!
And her ma gave her this handy box filled with all sorts of fancy seamstress tools.
Gina hasn't sewed anything since she made a pair of Jams in the 5th grade, so she has a lot of learning to do. This sad little green thing is Gina's first creation: a pillow she stuffed with Kleenex, and can't figure out how to close up yet.Soon she'll be making quilts with the best of them. In the meantime she's working on bread; these are French Bread rolls from her new bread cookbook. Thanks Bella!
We ate most of them already.

Bread: take 2

Gina was determined to make edible bread. She found a new recipe and measured her ingredients with a kitchen scale.
Her "Rustic Italian Bread" before:
And after. It took forever to make this bread. Gina had to leave midway through to play at a wedding, so Thomas baked it.
Delicious! It turned out exactly right.

Bread

Gina tried to make homemade bread this afternoon.
It's hard to tell what happened because Gina never cooked bread before, but the bread is horrible. It is kind of like concrete. Thomas, who is always kind, said that it is delicious but that he probably will just eat 2 slices.