Baking With Julia- White Loaves

Fresh bread, a photo by Teckelcar on Flickr.

I've joined in with a cooking project that I learned about over at Diane's blog, Ginosko. Last year the group did Tuesdays with Dorie, cooking recipes from Dorie Greenspan's "Baking From My Home To Yours," this year the cookbook is "Baking with Julia Child." From what I understand two recipes will be selected per month. I love Julia Child's style of cooking and I'm always up for a bit of baking. Throw in so blog fodder and I'm game.

The inaugural recipe is White Loaves and I must say it was a wonderful dough to create, silky smooth  and not at all sticky. The recipe was pretty much dead on, my only issue was I had longer rise times, but that was due to my cool house and not the dough. In the summer I'll be able to easily find a nice warm spot for the dough to rise. My only deviation from the recipe was to make one of my loaves a cinnamon swirl. Before folding up the dough and plopping it into the pan I brushed the surface with melted butter and sprinkled on both cinnamon and sugar.

The bread smelled heavenly while baking and it was very hard to keep the kids away while it cooled. The plain white loaf, on the right in the picture, was soon gone. I got only one slice and it was delicious. The second loaf I squirreled away for tomorrow. I figure it'll be a nice treat when it's toasted with a bit of butter. I'm looking forward to my next assignment!