Well it's official – I am not a breadmaker. Heck - I am not even a breadmaker’s elbow. Much as I luuuuuuurve to eat bread in pretty much any form, I most definitely do not love to make it, least of all by hand. There’s that whole time thing with the raising of the yeast and the kneading is not something I enjoy. However, the November Daring Baker’s challenge was issued by Tanna from My Kitchen in Half Cups and I’d missed the two previous challenges so I really had to participate for fear of being kicked out of the group.
The recipe sounded really great; I mean really great, and the variations gave lots of interesting options with the addition of different herbs, cheeses or olives but as I was time challenged I decided to stick to the basics. The end result was edible but unattractive and not very exciting in flavour. The best thing to come out of this challenge was the pleasure of being able to snip fresh rosemary from my very own herb pot and the worst thing to come of this challenge was that the fairly high heat of the baking reminding me that it is time to clean my oven – ugh!
In hindsight I think I should have tried to make a foccacia style loaf but I opted for the ball of dough/freeform shape.
I really only took this photo to show off my expensive-but-worth-it WMF spitzenklasse bread knife. Anyone who enjoys homemade or bakery bread should have a decent bread knife like this.
If you've got a few hours to spare you can check out how the other Daring Bakers got on by visiting our blogroll and selecting a baker of your choice. I've picked a random post for you here.
I’m looking forward to the December challenge which is..........drum roll please ...............................oh come on people, you didn’t really expect me to accidentally spill the beans did you? Ha! You’ll have to wait til the New Year to find out.
7 comments:
Your bread looks great.
i think the bread looks loverly and the inside of it looks amazing with that rosemary sprinkled throughout! and oooooh, the knife! now *she* is veddddddy pretty!!!
:)
Nothing wrong with your bread! (And yes, the knife looks great, drool worthy!) :-)
Happy to see you back, btw.
I think your bread looks wonderful! I wish I would have put rosemary in mine.
Perhaps bread baking doesn't come naturally (and if you don't enjoy it, then perhaps for the best -- baking is at least partially recreation, after all). But stepping up to a challenge you wouldn't normally undertake IS an exercise in daring baker spirit. I'm glad you decided to give it a go.
I think your bread looks yummy! I'd eat it!! :-)
PS...look for your name on my blog tomorrow. I just got an award/tag sort of thing and I'm passing it on to you. ;-)
The color of the crust is absolutely gorgeous, my love!
Rosemary in the bread sounds wonderful.. yum!
xoxo
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