I’ve been trying to write this post since the weekend after Thanksgiving and it just hasn’t happened until today.
This year I wanted to make my stuffing 100% homemade so I decided to turn to my bible (The Joy of Cooking) and find an awesome bread recipe to use as the base of my stuffing. I decided on Rustic French Bread and it was an ADVENTURE. I broke a major rule of trying a new recipe by not reading the entire recipe until I was already in the middle of it. Not good!
Overall, it was a very easy recipe, just very time consuming. After you combine the water and yeast you add bread flour and let that rise 6 hours. Then you knead in more flour and let rise again for 3 hours. Then you shape the dough into two loves and let them rise another 2-4 hours. Then you bake it for 45 minutes. I think I finally finished making the bread at 1am… which resulted in a very grumpy baker. But, the results were worth it. The dough was perfectly crusty on the outside and chewy on the inside. It was heavenly to nibble on and also looked pretty awesome in some pictures I took!
Yummmm this looks great!! And I love your photography too.
It was so yummy! Thanks Meg!