Look what I made!

My latest swashbuckling kitchen adventure involved the ever-fascinating rising yeast and its companions, the sweet but sneaky cane sugar and the strange beast called flour! Pounding the combination into the table and heating it yielded some fantastic results, and this pirate came away with booty to share! Behold - the taming of the baking ingredients!



It's delicious, too. Not whole wheat, as we didn't have whole wheat flour, but for bleached flour it turned out well enough. The crust is deliciously crispy and the inside is soft and light and chewy. I did an egg wash over the tops, as suggested by a friend online, and the tops turned a gorgeous shiny golden brown. One loaf suffered some mild discoloration where it came into contact with a rust spot on my cheap bread pan (sadly, I only have one good glass one) but having spots in no way diminishes its edibility.

So far I've done bread and butter as a late-night snack (I started baking late, and the loaves came out rather close to midnight, but I couldn't resist cutting off the end and crunching happily through it), thick-sliced toast in the morning with jam, and another slice for dinner with turkey and mashed taters 'n onions. I suspect both loaves will be gone by Friday, but that just gives me an excuse to get some real whole wheat flour and do it again! Thanks for the recipe, dad. ^_^