Carb city

I've now baked and eaten five loaves of bread in three days. Well, I've actually shared the loaves each time, but still — I'm on a kick.

Last week, my friend Marilee baked an amazing loaf of bread for us and I inquired into the recipe. (I used to bake bread fairly often, but somehow my loaves kept getting overworked or heavy, and the effort was no longer worth the return for me.) It turns out that not only does this recipe produce a tantalizing crunchy/soft artisan bread, but it's amazingly easy.

The basic recipe is available online here, and is further explored in the cookbook "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking" (which, judging from its current Amazon sales rank as #120, means that I'm probably well behind the curve on getting the news out on this bread).

After trying the basic recipe plain twice, I threw a bunch of diced mushrooms and cheddar cheese into the third one, with more cheddar cheese on top, and it was absolutely amazing. The bread still rose nicely unlike loaves I used to do with bonus ingredients. I'm attempting a garlic and thyme one tonight.

Go ahead and try it — it's really simple and extremely impressive.