How I know I'm a freakin' awesome girlfriend

See that?



It's a crusty loaf of bread.

AND.... I made it. ME. In a dutch oven. (Actually, technically what we have is called a french oven.)

Sounds more impressive than it really is. Because when you get right down to it... it's another "just add water" recipe. The recipe is that super easy No Knead Recipe going around the blog-verse. Of course, with my tendency to over - think and over-analyze things, I had a few issues and challenges.

"active dry yeast"
Okay... I had bread machine yeast. Is that active dry yeast? It didn't really say on the jar I had, but since it was the only yeast I had, I had no choice but to use it. That was an easy deliberation.

"warm room temperature, about 70 degrees."
What does 70 degrees translate to? Because where I come from, the house is always around 17 degrees. I had a feeling that 17 degrees is colder than the bread would like to be resting at. So I stuck it in the oven.

"what do you mean you stuck it in the oven?"
As R pointed out, I could have melted my melamine mixing bowl. Shit. Didn't think of that.

"The dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles."
The first time I made this bread. No bubbles. I thought a lot about the fact that there were no bubbles. I have no idea why there were no bubbles. The second time I made this bread, there were so many bubbles - it scared the crap out of me after I saw it breathing on its own out of the corner of my eye.

"When it's ready, the dough will have doubled in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger."
Um. It looks the same to me. Poked it a few times. Absolutely could not tell if it "readily" sprung (sprung? sprang?) back.

"At least 20 minutes before the dough is ready"
aka "At least three hours after you've forgotten about it"

"heat oven to 475 degrees."
Shit. My new, very precious, dutch oven has a heating maximum of 375 degrees. Fuck. An hour of googling later (Google, how i love thee) I realized that I had racially profiled my little pot incorrectly. He's FRENCH. Not Dutch! French ones have a [insert more technical term here that is not "plastic"] handle at the top which prevent you from heating it in the oven more than 375 degrees, unless you want to kill everybody in your house with toxic fumes as the handle melts and causes world-wide catastrophe. At least, that's pretty much the implications I took away with me when R told me not to heat it beyond 375 degrees. So I improvised. I stuck the oven in at 375 degrees for around 40 minutes, then I took the lid off and blasted it for another 15 minutes at 475 degrees.

I'm so clever.

On another note, if you want to double the recipe - don't forget to double the flour too. Just a friendly reminder ... I know most people wouldn't need this reminder... but some people might find it helpful.