Crib Bread

Look. the Q's no baker. Not even a little bit. I've never made what could even generously be described as a pastry. But when I realized how often I was going out of my way to buy a decent loaf of bread, something finally clicked. Why not make it home? People have been doing it for 1,000's of years. Do you really have to rely on people named Eli for a friggin' crusty loaf?

Of course not. So I started baking these unbelievably tasty loaves of bread a couple weeks ago, and I've just got to share it. Granted, you could leave the whole "crib" part of my recipe out and just leave the dough somewhere room temperature or warmer. But if you do have a little one at home, consider adding that special toddler bed twist to this classic "Sullivan Street Bakery" recipe.

Here's what you do. The night before you want delicious piping hot bread, you take 3 cups of flour and put it in a mixing bowl. You need 1 1/2 cups of liquid - I've been doing half milk half water, but suit yourself. Drop one packet of dry yeast into it, along with two regular ol' eatin' spoons of sugar and one regular ol' eatin' spoon of salt. Now you've got a nice dissolved elixir that you can slowly stir into your flour. And buddy, you're half the way home.

Don't go crazy mixing it. Just enough to make a mound of dough. Cover it, and put it in the kid's room overnight. Next morn, when your baby cries for attention, long before your sleep cycle is completed, you'll walk into a crib room filled with that nice yeasty bread smell. Be patient - you've got to wait 1/2 hour while drinking coffee over Teletubbies YouTube snippets - during which time that lightly greased/oiled cast iron pot (or, you know, that le creuset kinda thing) gets hot in your 450 degree oven. When its fully hot, open the oven, plop that mound of dough into it, cover it and wait another 1/2 hour. Turn off the heat and let it bake a bit more while the oven cools down. Take that puppy out and you'll be amazed at the near perfect round loaf staring you down and begging for butter.

Crib Bread. Delicious. Perhaps its the love of that little tyke. But I suspect it has more to do with the fact that it's freshly baked, cost next to nothing, and once worked into your daily routine, is easy as falling off a loaf. Give it a shot...you've got nothing to lose but your adherence to a low carb diet.