One Hot Night (Part 1 - Bread)

They say it tastes better if you have to fight for it. Let's add, or sweat your brains out for it. I was perfectly justified in skipping the gym the next day (especially after biking 40 miles over the course of the weekend, getting happily soaked)!

Even though the temperature outside was having a race with the temperature in the oven (thankfully it never quite caught up!), not having sandwich bread is not really acceptable. While I was at it, I decided to make a loaf of white Italian bread to eat with pasta. It took a lot of self-restraint to not put in all sorts of extra healthy stuff like I do for the "normal" bread. I found a very simple recipe (2.33 c flour, 1 c water, 1 tsp yeast, 1 tsp salt, 0.25 tsp sugar) online and added a few tablespoons of dried basil to the dough. Here it is being slathered with olive oil before the first rise:

It rose like crazy. Here's before and after being punched down:

It went crazy again during the second rise:

(It rises under a wet towel so the outside doesn't dry out. The oil on the pan is to keep it from sticking and to give it a golden bottom.)

(It also sprouted dried basil on top! How did that happen!?)

One of the great things about finding recipes online is you get the added wisdom of the commenters. I learned this way to take the bread out of the oven (no happy feat, considering it was 450!) every two minutes for the first 10 minutes of cooking to add water. This colors the crust and also keeps it from forming too soon, and reducing oven spring. At first I didn't think it was working and almost gave up, but the crust came out beautifully rustic.

I was even more speechless tasting it than looking at it!

P.S. I also made a loaf of my hearty whole wheat bread for sandwiches. After kneading it, the Italian bread was practically zero effort to knead; I had never kneaded bread so white so I didn't know what a big difference all the whole wheat flour, bran, flaxseed, etc. has on the toughness of the dough. I love the smell, color, and texture of the dough ball.

(In the lower left corner, you can see the strands of gluten. The finished bread was full of them. Anyone know what that means? I'm wondering if it could have risen more - it was extremely dense, but yummy and filling!