First Attempts- Bread is easy, right?

So today, I was craving tomato soup in a bread bowl. Back when I lived in the NW Suburbs of Chicago, there were Panera Breads all over the place. Now the closest one is at least a half hour away- and I do not have that kind of gas money.

When I was home this summer, my mom was cleaning out our cabinets and gifted me all of the baking ingredients in the house- I'm not the only one who doesn't cook in my family. I stored it in my own kitchen at school, and forgot all about it until I was lamenting the absence of bread bowls in my life.

Perfect, I thought. Bread is easy, I made that in preschool! Great first blog opportunity. It'll be perfect and in me will awaken a natural chef and I will never have to pay $8 for a bread bowl again because mine will be so much better.

L O L nope.

Here is the tale of my first attempt at really cooking. Enjoy!

I used a copycat recipe off of justapinch, which I'll attach at the bottom. It seemed fairly simple, though a tad bit time-consuming due to the yeast. But other than that, it seemed easy enough. Flour, Water. Yeast. Salt. Sugar. Egg white for a wash.

1. Mix 2 1/2 cups of water with 1 tsp of sugar in a large bowl. Add 2 packets of active dry yeast and let stand 5-8 minutes until foamy. Yeast is weird, guys. It smells gross and it looks even worse. Luckily you don't have to deal with it for all that long.
2. Add 2 tsp of salt, 2 tbsp of olive oil, and 4 cups of flour to the yeast mixture. Mix until thoroughly combined. The recipe says to use an electric mixer if you have one, but it was definitely easy enough to mix by hand. Also, this way, you only use one bowl! As my friends know, I hate dishes, so the less I have to clean, the better. 
3. Add in the remaining 3 cups of flour, 1/2 a cup at a time. Mix well after each addition, about 45 seconds on medium speed, or two minutes by hand. If using an electric mixer, switch from the paddle attachment to dough hook.
4. When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about six minutes. I did not anticipate how sticky dough would be. My hands looked like the hands of some sort of bread monster. I also did not anticipate how much I would enjoy kneading- kneading is fun! It's a great way to take out energy. It's surprisingly physical. Or maybe I'm just horrible at it. :) Either way, I would say that kneading the dough was my favorite part of this recipe.
5. Lightly oil a large bowl (whoops, didn't do that), place the dough in the bowl and turn to coat with oil (didn't do that either). Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 40 minutes. Ok, so I didn't follow the directions exactly. I don't think that affected it too much though- the oil seemed to be more for keeping the dough from sticking to the bowl than for anything else. I also have pictures of what it looked like before and after rising! 
6. 
7. Remove the expanded dough from the bowl and punch it down. Divide into eight equal portions. Also a very fun part. It reminded me of being a kid and playing with play dough. 
8.  Shape each of the portion into a round bowl shape of about 4 inches, and then place on two parchment lined baking sheets. This is the part I started doubting the recipe. While there's definitely a lot of dough, there was no way that the eight sections made eight four-inch-round balls. However, having never worked with yeast before, I thought that maybe it would resolve itself in the actual baking process. Also, I didn't use baking sheets- I don't own any! Instead, I used the glass pyrex pans I bought at a garage sale. 
9. Cover and place in an area that is free of drafts, and let rise until doubled in size, about 40 minutes. Again, I followed these directions. I waited even longer than 40 minutes. The rolls grew, but still not enough that it met the size suggestion of 4 inches round.
10. Place two racks in the bottom and middle positions, preheat to 400 degrees fahrenheit.P
11. Beat 1 egg white with a tablespoon of water, and lightly brush the tops of the bread bowls with half of the mixture. 
12. Bake for 15 minutes, and then brush on the remaining egg white. When returning to the oven, reverse the baking sheets. Make sure to do the reversing! my oven is older and small, and otherwise these wouldn't have baked evenly.
13. Bake for an additional 15 to 18 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from oven and allow to cool on wire racks. 

And that's when I stopped following the recipe. The "bowls" never grew in size in the oven- had I made six bowls, or four, rather than eight, I'm sure they would've been the right size. However, these were hardly bigger than rolls you get at a restaurant. They also looked nothing like any of the pictures from the recipe- they were a light color, but rock hard- had I baked them any longer, they would've burned. After letting them cool (in the pan, not on a rack- another thing I need to buy!) they didn't even taste anything like the bread from Panera at all. All in all, I was disappointed, but hey, bread is bread! And it was good enough when I dipped it into my soup. 

Here's a picture of the "bread bowls" after baking:

So what did I learn today?

I learned that yeast is weird. I learned to follow directions very closely, or your end product will turn out differently. But, I also learned that sometimes your recipe won't give you what you think it will, and that's ok. I learned that what kind of tools you use to bake matters. I think that using a baking sheet instead of my pan might have altered the outcome. I learned that I love to knead bread.

In the next year, there will be many more chances for me to attempt making bread bowls again. I think that next time I will try a different recipe, maybe a sourdough roll. But either way, I found today that it was okay to mess up, that I am not going to suddenly be able to make a 7 course meal that five star chefs will laud as the finest they've ever tasted. My first attempt was not a disaster, but not necessarily a success. And I am so excited to try again soon! :)

From now on, I will be updating each week, twice a week, probably on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Usually there will be one new technique per week, and one new recipe. 

Do you have any specific recipe or technique you would like to see? Comment below or email me at dontexpectmiraclesblog@gmail.com, and I will do my best to attempt it! Thanks for reading!

Want to attempt today's recipe on your own? Here's the link to the original post: http://www.justapinch.com/recipes/bread/savory-bread/homemade-bread-bowls.html 

Let me know how your attempt goes!