Garlic Bread

Last night was a much simpler meal -- just spaghetti and sauce.  We had a little leftover bread from Tuesday night's feast, though, so I figured I'd try my hand at garlic bread.  It was surprisingly easy.  I took a few big spoonfuls of butter, and melted them down in the microwave (25 seconds at 50%).  Then I stirred in a heaping tablespoon of chopped garlic.  This left me with a bunch of liquid butter -- very tough to manage.  So, I got out a second bowl, and half-filled it with ice-water.  I set the bowl w/ the garlic butter in the ice water, and stirred until it just started to thicken.  Then I let it sit while I squeezed four slices of bread out of the remaining loaf.  By the time I had the bread sliced, the garlic mixture was just about perfect -- still spoonable, but not particularly runny.  I spooned the butter onto the bread (being careful to keep it away from the edges), and popped the slices into the toaster-oven.  The result was pretty good.  I want to try a version topped with mozzarella, but I think that will require use of the broiler.

Bread!

I found this bread recipe in my feeds the other day, and it looked pretty easy, so I thought I'd give it a try. It has to be about the simplest bread recipe possible -- just flour, yeast, salt, and water. Mixing the dough takes about 20 minutes, and then you let it stand for 4 hours.

The only problem I encountered was the difficulty of getting the right temperature in my oven. I bought an oven thermometer, but getting an electric oven to exactly 450 is a challenge, especially the first time you try to figure out just how off the oven's gague is! I think I ended up with an oven that was just a little bit too hot. My bread was good, but a little crusty. We'll see how it goes with dinner tonight.