I've Got a Bun in the Oven...

^

 l

 l

Okay, no I don't. 

But today I DID make homemade bread for the first time! I have been nannying for the same family for 4 summers now. Most of the time they just say, "Why don't y'all make some brownies today?" Today I got, "Hey, why don't y'all make some bread today?" 

Uhhh....excuse me, but bread comes out of a bag with a twistie tie from Publix. 

I was very unsure of my bread-making abilities, but I put on my brave baker's hat and got busy anyways. Here's how we spent the first two and a half hours of our morning this morning:

This bread is a replica of Macaroni Grill's rosemary bread. I mixed the yeast, water, sugar, salt, rosemary, flour, and butter in the Kitchen Aid.

Then we oiled a bowl and let it rise until it doubled in size. The recipe says that step takes an hour, but their Dad told me it normally doubles in about 20 minutes. I didn't take a picture of this step because I was cleaning up the flour that I spilled ALL.OVER.THE.KITCHEN. Sigh...

After it doubled in size, I punched it back down to its original size and we split it into 7 equal balls of dough. We then let those balls of dough rise on oiled cookie sheets another 40 minutes under towels held up by drinking glasses. (Again, the techniques of their Dad.) He had another method of wrapping Saran Wrap around the glasses and THEN laying the towels over it, but....I thought it'd be okay with just the towels. :)

After about 40 minutes, they had doubled in size

Then we put them in the oven. The directions said 375 for 15-20 minutes until golden brown, but the first batch took way longer than that, so I bumped the temp up to 390 for the rest. 

After they were done, I buttered the top and added a little bit of cracked salt. And then, of course, I tasted it because I have no confidence in myself. But lo and behold! It was AMAZING! 

There are 5 people in their family, and they had plans to cut the loaves in half length-wise and make them into pizzas. I had it in my mind to eat mine with olive oil and cracked salt and pepper and Parmesan cheese. And then THAT made me think of Carabbas, which made me think of Sirloin Bryan, which made me think....yum. Add a Caesar salad, sauteed spinach, and creamed corn for the non-spinach eater and you've got yourself a meal.

We skipped out on the sundried tomatoes and basil, but we had the lemon butter reduction sauce and goat cheese...oh my. Delicious!

Gracie and Dakota thought it smelled pretty great too. Not bad for a Monday!