It's a party...that we're a few years late to.

A few years ago, I got Kyle The Bread Baker's Apprentice for Christmas...or his birthday, I can't really remember which. And we had the best intentions of baking bread from it. There were so many that looked SO good. Annnnddd....it never happened.

Fast forward a year or two or three. My dad sent me a few "no fail" bread recipes and we've loved making them. Then I started getting an itch to make some sourdough bread. I can't justify spending $4-$6 on a tiny, mediocre loaf of sourdough at the grocery store that isn't even baked locally.

Soooo....I pulled out The Bread Baker's Apprentice again earlier this week. After reading through the introduction a few times and perusing the extensive list of breads found between the covers, we decided that we'd bake through the entire cookbook.

What an ingenious idea! How original! See here, here, here, and here. Oh...and here too.

Original. HAH. What I've come to find out, is that we're more than a day half decade late and a dollar short. BUT, power on we shall.

We started at the very beginning. Kyle had last Wednesday off and I prepped the starter on Tuesday night for two loaves of Anadama Bread. The first formula in the book. I even received a snap during the day of the dough raising.

Unfortunately, I don't have a snap of the final product, but let me tell you...it was mighty fine.

A short little interjection before I continue with our story... When we were first married and living in our first apartment together (think fall 2013 to spring 2014), we had a desire to become fabulous bread bakers. We tried a few recipes and they never turned out. So we set out to make scrumptious bagels...and those were successful...once.

With the re-introduction and the new resolve to work our way through Bread Baker's Apprentice has come a sigh of relief with each loaf that's been successful.

That being said, we had a half day of school yesterday due to Blizzard Axl (think Josh Duhamel's son) so I started making the next formula in the book!

Greek Celebration Bread.

First I had to make a poolish. Yeah, I had no idea what it was either. And while that sat for a few hours, I relaxed.

Here are a few low high quality pictures of the process.

 secondary rising

 ready to go in the oven

 fresh out of the oven at 190 deg. internal

ready to eat

I'm excited to taste it. With cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, almond, and lemon in it--this bread has all of the ingredients to cozy up with during a blizzard.

I'll be here all winter long with pictures of our loaves and hopefully those of you with experience will give some input!

Happy Tuesday!