Pin Test: Peasant Bread

I love a good hearty, home baked bread.  I have never made a homemade bread, thinking that it would be super difficult.  But then I realized that this notion was inherited from my mother, who is a self proclaims "I'm no Betty Crocker" and finds making cookies from premade dough difficult and time consuming, and so she was likely pretty off on this one, too.

Scouring my cook books and Pinterest, I came across a simple recipe for a Peasant Bread.  I had all of the ingredients, and the afternoon to allow for good dough rise so I gave it a go.

So, the only down side to any of this was the actual web post this came from: it is way too long!  Too much commentary to skim through to get to the actual steps of putting this together.  Now, I realize that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, but really, I would have liked the commentary below all of the ingredients and directions.  I do read everything, but I would have liked to have what I needed to know immediately up front, then all the nice to know things after.

What I did differently (because I hate being told there is only one way to do things):
- Original recipe calls for unbleached flour.  The first time I did this I only had bleached on hand.  As it turned out, I found that version tastier than the unbleached.
- The original recipe makes a VERY LARGE loaf, or two loaves, so if you don't want to have a lot of bread or any leftovers, half the recipe.
- I greased my pyrex bowl with olive oil and cracked black pepper for a little extra flavor.  Turns out awesome, except the top part of the bread stuck to the bowl and needed to be scrapped out. If you are going for presentation, I suggest you stick with using butter as the original recipe states.

My thoughts on this Pin:
My husband ate his toasted with butter, me dipped in herb flavored olive oil, and my daughter ripped straight from the loaf.  It really is the easiest bread to make with out kneading or special mixers, etc.  It's a keeper!