from the kitchen: bread superhero

i have lots more knitting to report but while i get that ready, i wanted to share the best news ever.

i made bread. with my hands. using every flour and grain in my pantry.

and its edible! hearty, filling, and dare i say it - tasty and delicious!

the recipe isn't mine to share, alas. once upon a time, i wasn't such a fan of bread in general. but then: katie brought a loaf of bread to my university townhome for my roommates and i - made from this exact recipe. one bite and my eyes were opened. i got hooked on bread. i've been thinking about that loaf ever since.

katie and were recently exchanging emails and i confessed my obsession with that loaf she brought long ago (in my early twenties, when time seemed to stretch forever). and just like that, from memory, she typed her grandmother's recipe. 

so i bought i huge bag of flour and raided my pantry for all the grains i had and got to it. 

i should probably confess that i wanted my first bread-making experience to be a solitary one: focused, deliberate, meditative. not so much fraught with the manic supervision required of me when i'm cooking with my babes. but the boy got wind and i gracefully (as in, i was the only parent on duty at time) obliged.

thankfully, there was only a little scolding involved: not enough to break my bread-making zen, anyway.

and lo!

i made bread, yo. 

in my mind, when these loaves came out of the oven, trumpets played as i burst through 3 apartment stories, twirling, with my cape and mini skirt (there was a costume change, naturally), 4 loaves of bread in my arms, to fly with the eagles (in case they wanted some freshly made hand-baked bread with their prey). i also suppressed an irrational desire to run up and down the co-op telling anyone who would listen i made bread (i posted a photo on instagram instead).

but it is more than enough that i loved baking the bread, that the boy loved the experience, that the girl was just as excited to taste the bread right out of the oven, and that the wife forced herself from her sick bed (she was nursing something nasty at the time)to have her fill.

i'm totally making bread regularly from now on. (thank you, katie!)

as long as it doesn't eat into too much of my knitting time. bread-making superheroes need to stay sane, too.

any favourite bread recipes you'd care to share?