Adventures in Bread Baking

I've never made bread before last night. Wait, scratch that - I tried to make bread once when I was in high school and failed. I tried to make some sort of special French Christmas bread that I thought would be perfect for my French class Christmas party - all I remember is that it took forever to make, required letting the dough sit overnight, and then it turned out as hard as a rock.

Ever since then, I've always thought of bread as a difficult and time consuming thing to make, and I haven't bothered trying to bake it again - until last night. I found a recipe from Alexandra's Kitchen that was labeled the best and easiest bread you will ever make - and I promise you, Alexandra wasn't kidding!

I made the bread in the evening, and it only took a few hours from start to finish - plus there's no kneading involved. Mine didn't exactly turn out perfect - I didn't have the proper kind of bowls to use, so for that reason (or possibly something else I screwed up) my bread didn't rise very high.

This is what mine looked like...

And this is what it should have looked like (from the original post)

However, despite the puny appearance of my bread, it was DELICIOUS! I really think it is one of my favorite breads ever.

Apologies for the yellowish, blurry pictures in this post. I had no intention of posting about this initially, but since I am still mentally obsessing over this bread a day later, I figured I'd write up a quick post to recommend it, ugly phone pics and all!

A tasty slice!

Do you make homemade bread or are you as scared of it as I was? Either way, I seriously recommend giving this recipe a try!!