Once this loaf was out of the oven it was hard to keep the girls away from it and after just one bite Erika proclaimed it was the best bread she had ever tasted. The recipe is from Artisan Bread In Five Minutes A Day. The title won me over when I saw it at the library last week and it really was easy and fast. For the full recipe, check out the book because it goes on for six pages or so with lots of details. I will give the abridged version here.

Boule (Artisan Free Form Loaf)
Makes four 1 pound loaves and is easily doubled or halved

3 cups of lukewarm water (about 100 degrees, or slightly warmer than body temperature)
1 1/2 tablespoons yeast (or 1 1/2 packets)
1 1/2 tablespoons course kosher salt or 3/4 tablespoon table salt
6 1/2 cups unsifted, unbleached, all purpose white flour
handful of cornmeal

1. Mix warm water and yeast in a large bowl that has a lid (not airtight). I used a 3 quart glass Pyrex bowl with a lid.

2. Mix in all the flour at once. The recommended way to measure it out is to scoop it up by the cup full and use a knife to level the top. Mix with a wooden spoon, mixer, or by hand until there are no dry areas. You don't need to knead! The dough will be spongy and wet-- you want that.



3. Cover with a lid and let it rise for about two hours and then refrigerate at least three hours, preferably overnight.



4. When you're ready to bake (I waited until the next day), sprinkle some flour on the entire dough mass which is still in the bowl and use a serrated knife or scissors to cut off a grapefruit size chunk of dough.

5. Dust the chunk of dough with some flour and pull the top around to the bottom from all sides until you have a nice ball. This should take less than a minute. The directions in the book made this step seem kind of complicated, but their website shows just easy it is here.

6. Liberally dust a wooden cutting board (the book recommends a pizza peel) and place the dough ball on the boards and let it sit, uncovered, for 40 minutes.



7. 20 minutes before baking, preheat oven to 450 degrees and place a baking stone or upside down cookie sheet on the middle rack in the oven. Place another pan somewhere else in the oven where it won't get in the way of the bread.

8. Before placing in oven, dust the top of the bread with flour and use a serrated knife to slash the bread about 1/4 inches deep in whatever awesome design you wish.

9. Pop the loaf onto the hot cookie sheet and quickly pour 1 cup of water into the other pan (this creates steam, which makes for a very crunchy crust.

10. Cool completely on a wire rack and enjoy! Store leftover bread (I doubt there will be any) by placing it cut side down on a plate, uncovered.



My bread didn't turn out very pretty, but is still tasted great!

For Corey's 32nd Birthday Erika and I made chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream frosting. This family loves chocolate. I added some strawberries just to make myself feel better about all that sugar. And butter. And cocoa.

I followed the recipe exactly for the cake and it was pretty great. It was slightly crumbly, but I think a few more hours in the fridge would have done the trick. I didn't have the fudge that the frosting recipe called for, so I omitted it and used all butter rather than butter and shortening combined. Next time I will add the fudge because if you're going to make a cake this chocolaty, you should just go for it.

The girls each painted a picture frame for their Dad. Erika drew pictures of herself and Audrey to put in the frames because I wanted Corey to pick out the photos that went in them, but the drawings are so cute that he might just want to keep those in there instead.

I've been sick with a cold for a few days and all I wanted today was some fresh bread. Last week I made this French bread I found over at Joy the Baker. It didn't rise properly so it turned out kind of dense. I had to try again. I wish I had followed the link from her site to Steamy Kitchen where there is an awesome French Bread tutorial for novices like me. But, I didn't check that out until the bread was cooling. I guess I'll be making this bread again soon.

But even without the tips, today the dough rose beautifully (I used hot water rather than warm- I really need a thermometer in the kitchen....) and it was just what this achy body needed. I warmed up a can of tomato bisque soup with it and, not to my surprise, it didn't quite match up to the bread. Hey, I'm sick. I can only do so much.

I've had this recipe saved in my bookmarks under "yum" for a few weeks and finally made them today. I made some changes to the recipe after reading a few reviews and they turned out pretty darn good. The girls really liked them. Especially warm out of the oven with butter. Lots of butter.

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour (I used I cup whole wheat and one cup white)
1 1/4 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups shredded carrots (about four medium carrots)
1/2 cup raisins (I used dried cranberries)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup unsweetened flaked coconut (I left this out)
1 apple - peeled, cored and shredded
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil (replaced with 1 cup applesauce)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease muffin tins or line with cups. Mix flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.



2. Shred carrots and apple and add to raisins (or cranberries) and walnuts.



3. Mix all of the above.



4. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, vanilla, and oil (or applesauce).



5. Mix with dry ingredients from above.



6. Now scoop into your muffin tin and pop in the oven for 20 minutes (more like 25 minutes for me). As you can see, I stabbed each poor muffin to make sure they were ready because at 20 minutes they were still pretty runny in the middle.



7. Now get the butter and enjoy!

Split pea soup and fresh bread for dinner. As the winter slowly winds down these simple bowls of soup seem extra special; we are warming ourselves against the last of winter and savoring each hearty bite. I have been making this bread every week since I found the recipe on Garden Mama's blog. Today I made it with half whole wheat flour and it was especially yummy. I almost bought a bread machine the other day, but decided I was enjoying the feel of dough on my hands too much. Maybe when the weather warms up and we aren't home so much it will be more handy.

Oh, what to do with another cold and dreary day? It was Erika's idea to visit the mall so we could "run around and play in the play area and see the puppies at the pet store." Sounds good to me. The depths of winter will make you do crazy things. Here they are riding a little corvette.


And checking out the puppies.


Corey had the day off and it was his idea to make these when we got home:



And to top off a perfectly laid back day, we rented Up (for $1 at the Blockbuster Express machine at the grocery store!), which was a really wonderful film that you should see if you haven't already.

We had the perfect winter day yesterday. After a mostly snowless winter, we finally had a good storm yesterday and went out to tromp around in it. The girls made the first footprints all the way up our block and and made "snowcastles" with their sandbox tools. The snow wasn't really sticky enough to make this work well, so we'll have to give it another shot in the next few days!

Knowing that we were bound to home by the weather, I took advantage of this time to make some bread. I got the recipe from Allrecipes.com (I swear I don't work for them, I just use the site a lot). It turned out awesome! I was inspired by a post last week over at Gardenmama's blog. Erika loves to help in the kitchen whenever she can and especially likes to make her own tiny loaves and eat them warm out of the oven.

While waiting for the bread, we worked on some Valentine's decorations. This was a big hit because there was glitter glue involved. The hearts were pre-made and we just colored, glued, and stuck lots of stickers.