After First Bake
My no-knead bread was for sure not more than double its size when I dumped it in the hot cast-iron skillet. But one thing I’ve learned from doing things I have never done before, both in knitting and in cooking, is to stick to the recipe/pattern unless common sense tells you to cease and desist. Since I really had no idea what to expect from this recipe, and it was costing me nothing but goopy hands and 68 cents, I stuck with it.
‘Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes.’ I was very happy to cover it so I didn’t have to look at it anymore. I set the timer and went to my desk. Just before the bell rang, I started to smell delicious bread and I actually thought, ‘Oh, where is that smell coming from?’ Um, my kitchen! That smell had to be a good sign. I pulled the pot out and took a peak. It looked kinda like bread, and it smelled like bread, so it might be bread! And I might not be seriously handicapped.
‘Then remove lid and bake another 15-30 minutes until golden brown.’
Golden Brown!
I’d call that golden brown! Look at that beautiful bread! It looks like bread! And my apartment was filled with amazing bread smell. I still can’t get over how that goopy mess turned into this.
Beautiful Bread Cooling
I mean, seriously. LOOK AT THAT! I’m in awe of it. This morning we had toast, just because we could.
My Peanut Butter Toast, PT's Raspberry Preserves Toast
The inside is holey and moist and amazing, the crust is hard and chewey. I want to use it as a pillow. No, I want to hollow it out like a bread bowl, shrink myself, and use it as a bed.
Peanut Butter and Jelly Lunch
I toasted some of the bread and made the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich ever, with some chips, two of the cookies I baked up Sunday, and Sex and Bacon, our book club book.
I’m fighting with Sex and Bacon. I want to like it, there are parts of it that are funny and clever and interesting, but for every paragraph I think is well written and fun, there are three that are overly graphic just for the sake of being overly graphic, to the point of it becoming off-putting. I’m a prude, a bible prude by proximity and not by faith, I know this. I’m not into asses. I’m not into sex with girls. I was a virgin till 19 and I’ve only had sex with three people. I know who I am and I’m more than ok with it. I’m also more than ok with people who love rim jobs and having sex with animals and cucumbers. But seriously, every page. Every chapter. Every paragraph has either graphic sex or graphic meat eating. I don’t mind meat eating, either! Yeah, I’m a vegetarian but I read this hamburger blog and love it! I don’t mind when people eat meat around me, I even cook it for them on occasion. But all the meat juices and the devouring of whale and bacon grease! It is just too much.
BREAD!
I wonder if people get sick of me talking about how much I love bread on this blog. And pasta. And oats. And vegetables. Like, are there people out there reading this thinking, ‘Yeah, she is kinda funny but all those carbs? SO off-putting. Makes me nauseous.’
As I stare at that peanut butter and jelly sandwich on that amazing crusty bread it took 24 hours to bake! Shit. I mean. Shit. I’m saying they don’t know what they are missing the same way the bacon lady is saying I don’t know what I’m missing in every chapter. Every. Chapter. Over and over.
But isn’t it easier to love bread? It can’t hurt you. You can’t get poisoned from it, you don’t have to kill anything to eat it. It costs practically nothing. It comes in a million different variations! It can be sweet or savory or plain or spicy.
Well, bread, I’ll always love you.
