A scientist, eh?

Lola informed me yesterday that she is going to be a scientist when she "grows up." When I asked her why a scientist, these were a few of her answers:

1. They stay up late.
2. They paint things.
3. They know how to eat strawberries with their feet.

Me: "Really? Wow. That's impressive! How do you know all of that?"
Lola: "I'm an expert."

There you have it, folks. She is an expert. An expert at EVERYTHING. Welcome to my world.

Must share

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon this recipe for homemade bread. I've made homemade bread before but never like this. This recipe calls for cooking the bread in a Dutch oven. It also calls for letting it rise anywhere from 8 to 24 hours. But, we wanted the bread in a couple of hours, so we fudged the recipe a little, and it still turned out great. It wasn't very tall - it was more like a round disk than a ball, but it was nice and crusty on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside.

Ingredients:

3 cups flour (white, wheat or a combination of the two)

2-3 teaspoons kosher salt

1 package yeast (I used quick rising)

1.5 cups warm water

Mix the first three ingredients in a bowl. Add the warm water and stir until combined (yes, it's that easy! No kneading required here). Cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel and set aside. (I only let mine sit for a couple of hours, but the recipe calls for 8 to 24. Mine probably would have been taller had I let it rise longer, but it's good to know you can still get a good loaf of bread with only a couple of hours of rise time. When you're ready to bake the bread, preheat the oven to 450 degrees with your pot inside the oven. My dough was super sticky and ooey-gooey, so I sprinkled a generous amount of flour over the top and used a spatula to scrape it away from the bowl and into my preheated Dutch oven. I didn't grease the Dutch oven first - just plopped the dough right in there and formed it into a round shape. Put the lid back on the pot and bake for 30 minutes. Then, take the lid off and let the bread continue baking for another 15-20 minutes or until it's nice and brown. This is how mine looked when I took it out of the oven (see above). It didn't stick at all. Just fell right out of the pot. Amazing!

I based mine off of this recipe and this recipe. Try it!