Making Italian Bread

Last night our dinner was so delicious that Matt said I should blog about it.

We had Pasta Fagioli Soup.  It is pretty good, but pretty light; you need to eat something else with it.  I was thinking some good Italian bread would be the perfect side.  In my renewed efforts to live within my means I decided to make some instead of just buying a loaf.  I've watched my mom make bread before (thank you Mummis!  I definitely relied on your teaching while making the bread), but I have never made any of my own, so I searched online for the most simple, basic Italian bread recipe I could find.  This is the recipe I ended up picking.  It calls for bread flour, but I didn't want to buy that, so i just used regluar all-purpose flour.  The only thing I ended up needing to buy was a 40¢ packet of yeast.

Making the bread was nice; a much more calm and enjoyable experience than any other time I've made something for the first time.  At dinner we dipped it in a concoction of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and ground pepper.  It was delicious!



All that was left of our 12-inch loaf after dinner.