One Hour Bread (if it looks like bread, tastes like bread, then. . . )

This bread recipe works. That's all I have to say on the matter of this loaf. Whether or not you believe truly worthy bread can only be had through a "looong fermentation/resting" period, or from hundred year old sourdough starter, sometimes a girl's gotta have bread. And now, not tomorrow. (I'll be a cast out by the "bread heads" for saying this, but I've yet to have a sourdough starter loaf of bread knock my socks off.) Anyhow, if you feel daring--oh, and pressed for time (and who isn't?)--you will not be sorry you waited til four in the afternoon to decide dinner would be enhanced "if only" you had a fresh loaf of bread you could serve. And here it is. One. Hour. Bread.

Most of the time, I'd classify myself as a "skeptic". This is a family trait. Non trusting. Or better yet, to borrow a phrase, "trust but verify". As skeptics, we get the daily local newspaper in this house--The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for anyone interested. The for real paper--the one we'd be able to read were the world to suddenly not have internet. (Shudder the thought.)

Wednesday is my favorite newspaper day because it's the "foodie" day. More and more though, it should be called the "food" day as it seems the recipe offerings are shrinking to fewer and fewer. We'd subscribe to more newspapers, but then my fear is I'd find myself buried in my home like a hoarder trying to play catch up on all the news I'd fall behind on reading. (Sometimes this occurs with my magazine subscriptions. But not to a hoarding degree--my OCD personality just won't allow it.)

A few weeks ago, this recipe  appeared in the Food section, along with a pretty convincing column on why you should try this loaf. Of all the food groups, bread is my favorite. It must come from my father's side--Italian/Croatian. Pasta was it's own food group, too. 

Skeptic that I am, I set out to make this loaf at around four-thirty in the afternoon--just to push the envelope a bit on the matter of time and whether or not this recipe really, really could hold its own. Well, I can tell you it absolutely does. Now, did I tweak the recipe a bit? Of course. I added one cup of spelt flour and one cup of bread flour out of the 3 1/2 cups of regular flour called for. I also added one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar--you know, just to give it that sourdough tang. (And it measured up against my favorite local bread's sourdough version with this enhancement.)

Warm bread, freshly baked and thrown handmade with love, I proudly served this loaf alongside dinner. Without mentioning it was a mere hour ago I'd just begun baking said loaf, Dr. Thyme proclaimed his love for the bread. I was shocked. (He's a great judge of bread.) Thus, I can wholeheartedly endorse this one hour bread worth every sixty minutes of your time.

Of course we couldn't finish the whole loaf. It was huge. So I sliced up the rest of it, put it in a plastic bag and froze it for toast the rest of the week. Delish! Now my goal is to play around with the recipe a bit more and make an incredible whole grain, nutty loaf.