Tuesdays with Dorie - Julia's White Loaves....

I had forgotten how much fun it was to bake bread.  When my children were small (I'm gonna age myself here) and before there were so many places where you could get good  bread, I spent a couple of years baking bread every weekend.  I mean I was a serious bread baker....I bought flour in 25 lb. sacks from the local health food store and wore out my copies of Beard on Bread and Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book and was making whole wheat, rye and pumpernickel.  I checked out every book the local public library had about bread baking.  Somewhere life got in the way and I stopped. Imagine my delight when I read that the first recipe chosen for TWD BWJ was Julia's White Loaves.....so I rolled up my sleeves and got started...

I guess by now you've figured out how this blog got it's name.  Except for one other small bit of counter space, this is the sum total of my work space.  This recipe, which can be found here, worked great with my KitchenAid Professional 600 stand mixer.


Ready for the first rise....(it's obvious I'm going to have to get better at this photography and lighting thing)

Into the pans for the second rise...

So far so good...not as much rise as I had anticipated.  I think the slight outward slant of the sides of my loaf pans grabbed a little of the over-the-top-of-the-pans rise the book said I would get....

Et voila!  Not bad and the house smelled wonderful.  These loaves have excellent flavor and crumb and make lovely toast.   The best part is I'm baking bread again.

Ah, now all I need is a cup of tea!

And the downside..... ;D