Um, You'll Know That You've Eaten Some Bread

I'm not sure what possessed me because I got up and felt like baking some bread. Part of it was that I just couldn't shake the feeling that it was Friday and that I had nowhere that I had to be *shrug*. I was going to try making Pizza Fondue (I'll hyperlink that once I post about it) and through it would be good for dipping since I didn't have a baguette or anything.

Because of that whole Friday thing *shrug*, I started just a little too late for the amount of time that I really had (the really stupid thing is that, even though I had the Friday feeling, I had been reminding myself all day that it was indeed Saturday and that I had to leave at 2:00 to teach. What can I say, I'm an idiot.) so I had to ask Meag to hang around and pull the bread out at the right time. She did me one better and put a thin coat of butter on it when she pulled it out. The other ridiculous thing to do when under a time crunch is to try a new recipe from Jamie Oliver that requires, I think, a certain level of familiarity with bread dough.

Jamie Oliver' Basic Bread Recipe (from The Naked Chef)

3/4 oz active dried yeast (couldn't find neither a scale calibrated that lightly nor consensus on the internet as to what the Tablespoon equivalent would be. I averaged it all out to 2 Tbsp)
2 Tbsp honey (or sugar) (I went with sugar)
just over 2 cups tepid water (I went with 500 mL on the nose)
just over 1 lb bread flour
just over 1 lb semolina flour (if you can't get hold of any semolina flour then bread flour will do) (I figured out that he probably meant a kilo of flour as 2 lb is 908 g and 92 g would definitely qualify as "just over")
2 Tbsp salt

Dissolve yeast and sweet in half of the water. He does his bread dough on a flat surface and, while I would love to dry that someday, I just don't have the counter space so I used my giant bread bowl while the oven was warming. Measure the flour and salt into the bowl, make a well and add the yeast mixture to it. Gradually add the flour with your fingers (you know, that swirly thing they do when they make pasta). Add the rest of the water and once it's mixed, start kneading for about 5 minutes. He say that it will be a wet dough but I have to confess that I didn't read that line and added a little more flour as I mixed it, that would account for the heft.

Proof it in a warm spot for about 40-90 minutes (yes, that's the range he gave. With my time crunch, I'm sure you'll understand that I proofed for 40 minutes... just) or until double in size. Punch it down for about a minute and then shape it. I did one monster loaf that ended up taking up my entire pizza pan and a bunch of what he called snap bread. Mine are more like the breadsticks from Domino's on the snap-to-chewy scale.

Even with the flub, I would probably make this again. Taste? Pretty darned good actually. The snapbread is a little yeasty but it doesn't proof for as long as the big loaf. Density? Wow. You will know that you've eaten some bread.