Best home made-better-than-bakery-crusty bread easy NYT recipe!

[SGB]

JDarg - Maybe I should join you and not try this whole bread thing! I just ate a slice of my first loaf. It was good on the inside, but the bottom of my loaf was really hard and a little burned. My son gobbled up a slice, so it can't be too bad, but I'd like to improve my bread making skills, if possible.

Any ideas on what I did wrong? I used a big Circulon pot to cook it in. I was going to use my big Corning casserole, but the glass top slipped off it as I was getting it out of the cabinet and shattered ALL over the kitchen floor. I'm sure we'll be finding slivers of glass for the next year.

 

[Jdarg]

JDarg - Maybe I should join you and not try this whole bread thing! I just ate a slice of my first loaf. It was good on the inside, but the bottom of my loaf was really hard and a little burned. My son gobbled up a slice, so it can't be too bad, but I'd like to improve my bread making skills, if possible.

Any ideas on what I did wrong? I used a big Circulon pot to cook it in. I was going to use my big Corning casserole, but the glass top slipped off it as I was getting it out of the cabinet and shattered ALL over the kitchen floor. I'm sure we'll be finding slivers of glass for the next year.

Buy bread.;-)

 

[jpbhen]

no no - this bread REALLY is easy. i bake it all the time, and never baked bread before reading the original post for this on sowal in january. a couple of ideas: i use an inexpensive dutch oven from kmart - a martha stewart blue enamel one. easy to handle, not too heavy - just right. make sure that you have plenty of white cornmeal dusted on all sides of the dough before you "dump" it in the heated pot. i don't bake quite as long as the original recipe calls for - i do a half hour with the lid on, but probably not much more than 5-6 minutes with the lid off. maybe the bottom got hard during the last few minutes of browning - easy to have happen at that high temperature. honestly, i used to bake 2 loaves at a time, and have switched to 4 so i can freeze 2. the bread is just great, and makes wonderful panini. but the coolest thing - i found directions for making crusty rolls using the same dough and slightly changed baking directions, and they are just great.