Crusty French Bread

I'm a baker!  I baked the French Bread recipe a few nights ago and forgot to take pictures when it came out of the oven.  (I was hungry.) But I did remember to take a few of the half that was left.  The loaves so far have been the perfect size for two people to have about three-four slices of bread.  Good crunchy crust! You can bake a loaf that's thinner or thicker depending on your preference of crust to crumb (the inside of the loaf). The french bread rests for a shorter amount of time and bakes for slightly less time than the artisan freeform loaf.  It takes a bit less than an hour from fridge to belly. Yum.

Artisan Bread

I cooked bread last night!  It was tasty and delicious.  Nice crunchy crust, good creamy, dense interior.  It reminded me a lot of the bread I get at the Italian market. (and a little of the artisan bread from Kroger - the one with the whole garlic cloves -but better than that one.)

I used the instructions from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking

The loaf I baked was the rustic artisan freeform loaf. (The first recipe in the book.) It truly only took about 5 minutes of my time so far, including all of the clean up. You need to prepare time for the bread to rise and bake, naturally, but that is time where you can be doing something else. Plus, once the dough is mixed, it sits in the fridge and you just cut off a hunk for the night.  I made a half recipe the first time as I didn't have a container big enough for the whole one.  I wanted to test out the recipe and technique before I put any money into buying a big container for all of that dough.  Tonight, I'm trying the french bread.  I'm using the same batch of dough that I used last night, but a different baking technique.  Will report back with remarks!

Hello gnome!

My first beard and it's really cute. Totally worth every bit.  If I went with this beard, I would have been finished yesterday (Monday) for a total of 19 days start to finish.  (That includes about a week of not working on it at all!)

Now, onto the cuteness. This is the beard knitted with Foxy Sable. I thought it would be too dark from looking at it in the skein, but when it's knitted it seems lighter.  The light strands show up more. I like this beard, but am open to others. (So of course, I'm knitting some more to test!)






Typical. Always involved in the photo shoot.


More pictures on my flickr page in my gnome set..

Nearing the finish line...

We have a body!

You can see my center of the body stitch markers. These helped me center the legs and arms and I'm leaving them in so I know where to place the nose.
Next: the beard.

More layout...

I think I have my layout set up as what I envisioned. Something fresh, clean and white/light.  I think white dishes are really the best type of dishes to own as food looks better on white.  I guess I wanted the same for my blog.  I thought I wanted something darker and with some color but I got it all set up (which took a while) and it didn't feel quite right.  The more I look at this setup, I like it more and more.  It still needs some tweaking (a header and some sidebar customization and who knows what other little things) but I like it.

Fixed!

Got that fixed.  I knew there had to be a reset button somewhere....just wish I had found it before deleting my posts. Now to import my old posts from my old (shortly lived) blog  from a few years ago and the posts I deleted - just to make sure the info all stays in one place.
ETA: and to fix all of the picture sizes so they aren't cropped off on one side.

Seaming away

One arm down, one to go. Cute. Thumb was fiddly, but I redid it once and it looks much better. - Also, why did I decide to do the most fiddly one first? It's super cute, but I was not in the mood to seam more after this.  All I wanted to do was sit and look at the cuteness!

Yeah, the color is all off on these.  It was late and I was in my office with flourescent lighting.  Didn't realize how the combo of no sunlight/only flourescent light makes all of the photos so blue.  *Note to self in the future, it is worth it to wait a day to take pictures in the sunlight.  But, I was really excited about the first part all seamed and stuffed!