Bread Bake-a-thon

Our friend Patrick has recently gotten himself hooked on bread making. So much so that he invited me over for a bit of bread making 101. The thing is, I've always been a bit scared of making bread. I mean, yeast is alive! True, I play around with bacteria all day but cooking with yeast is an entirely different story! So after several hours of kneading, rising and baking, this is what we ended up with:

Bread #1: Flax Seed Wheat Bread (2 loaves)
This first one was quite easy and a good one to start off with. It basically required all the ingredients to be mixed together without too much kneading. We used slightly more water than stated in the recipe and the loaves turned out beautifully! The bread was surprisingly fluffy, despite the fact that the loaves didn't rise very much.


Bread #2: Pain de Provence (1 loaf)
The second bread was absolutely delish! It was essentially a crusty herb bread (we used rosemary and oregano) that was deliciously fragrant on its own or in a sandwich.



Bread #3: Mixed berry cream cheese braid (4 braids)
This last one was the most fun to make. The original recipe used blueberries but we replaced them with mixed berries. The bread had a subtle sweetness that contrasted well with the tartness of the berries and cream cheese. The best part about this one is that we can play around with the fillings now that we know the basic recipe works so well. Hmm... the possibilities...



We also planned to make banana bread (and a mango version because I don't eat banana) but we ran out of time because of dinner plans. Saving it for next time! Looks like I got over my fear of break making though! :)