Not My Favorite

   For Valentine's Day, my husband spoiled me. We agreed to stay at home for the evening and make a really nice prime rib dinner together. But much to my surprise, he came home from work with gifts. Yes, plural. GIFTS. #1 - The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. I had seen it in Barnes and Nobles and fell in love with it. It has drawings and pictures, how-to guides, "for best results" tips and tricks. And the great thing about this book is it's for by hand bread makers and there's not a lot of bread machine recipes. I refuse to use a bread machine. The best part, my husband wrote this beautiful message in the cover about following my dreams and believing in me. I cried. #2 - A bread/pizza stone with wire handles for delicious authentic bread making. #3 - A wooden oven paddle for retrieving my breads from the oven without burning myself. He got me all the essentials to get started on my bread journey. So of course I put them to use right away.
   I thumbed through the Bread Bible sticking post-its on all the recipes that looked good. Before I knew it I had a post-it on every other page. So I think I'll just start at the beginning and bake my way through the whole thing! The first recipe I decided on was for potato bread. The starter required yeast, all-purpose flour, and water from boiling a potato. I got all that together and let it ferment. The recipe said to peel and mash the potato for the next step. But the potato was not soft enough to mash. I tried boiling it again and found myself a little frustrated when I saw a notation: You may substitute the mashed potato for 3/4 cup potato flour and 1 cup warm water. I had found potato flour at the Mother Earth whole food store last week so I said screw it and threw the potato away. The starter, or "sponge" as the book calls it, slept in the fridge overnight. The next afternoon I added the flour mixture, let my Kitchen Aid mixer do the kneading work for the required 10 minutes, plopped the dough in an oiled loaf pan and let it rise. I'm not sure why, but the recipe required I preheat the oven to 475 an HOUR before baking. That seems like a lot of wasted electricity, but I did it anyway since it was my first time using this recipe. It also said to place a baking sheet on the bottom of the oven during preheating and then toss a 1/2 cup of icecubes on it when I put the bread in. Well this made my pan shrivel and creak and it RUINED it! I was pissed. I guess the ice allows for a steaming process that makes the crust extra crispy, but I'm not happy about my pan. When the timer went off, I took is out of the oven and glazed it with butter. The crust was firm and crispy, the inside was perfectly fluffy and soft. Overall, the bread was good, but I'm not a fan of the recipe and preparation process. I'll have to play with it and come up with another solution for creating steam in the oven.