Georgia O'Keefe, Call Your Baker!

We were having fried egg sandwiches for dinner, and I wanted a good bread for it. Something thick & hearty, able to hold up to squishing.

I admit, I don't bake bread on a regular basis; Alex is too much a sandwich monster to keep up with the demand (blame it on his growing boy-ness), so we buy a loaf of white fairly often.

It's not as if he's growing up on Wonderbread! He's seen me make bread plenty of times, and his grandmom makes it every weekend. He knows about kneading and rising, and loves to help.





Since what I wanted was a very basic, very simple, recipe, I was faced with a slight dilemma: with hundreds upon hundreds of cookbooks taking up space in an already storage-blighted house, finding just the right one would require an overnight bag, a map, and an OTC for headache relief.

I have a lot of cookbooks. A very large number of them are dedicated to baking....

I looked at Martha, I checked out the Bread Bible. But what I wanted was something homey, and I didn't really feel like giving up an entire day to something that would be consumed in less than ten minutes.

So, I grabbed my copy of The Good Home Cookbook (which I helped recipe-test!), and found what turned out to be a very easy white loaf. Dry ingredients, wet ingredients. Nothing outrageous or fancy. Went all Earth Mother on it, and mixed and kneaded it all by hand.

Rose beautifully, both times, and then it was ready to bake. Well, almost. It needed a good 'slash' down the top and a liberal basting of butter. Which it got.

Into the oven; the house smelled fantastic. Took it out, let it cool. It wasn't until later that I noticed something...




That nice 'slash' I gave the dough? During baking, it had...um, expanded. Into a rather more provocative shape.

I may have to give this bread an "X" rating!!






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Tagged with: Food and Drink + Bread + Sandwiches + Baking + Georgia O'Keefe + The Good Home Cookbook+ Cookbooks