Striped Toe Socks

There is something about bread, it's simplicity perhaps, it's ability to fill you with warmth and comfort. My feelings about bread may in fact explain the state of my thighs, but no matter.

I have wanted to learn how to make homemade bread for years. Last year a friend gave me a bread maker that she didn't want anymore and it sat in the spare room unused. When I decided not to take any classes this quarter I realized I would need use my brain in other ways. I decided one of the ways I could expend myself at home was bread making. One of the blogs I read recommended the book The Bread Bible. When I picked it up at the library and started looking through it I wasn't sure I could do. A sponge? I have to make a sponge? What the hell is that? It seemed to have so many steps (10!) and things to learn before I even started. So I read the first chapter and learned the basics of flour, how to create the best place for rising and how to shape the loaf. I started with rolls and they turned out OK, yummy, but without the rise I had hoped for. I learned not to fear the yeast or the dough and decided I was ready to make the "real" thing, a loaf, two in fact.
Here is the result.


Pretty good if I do say so myself.