Ohhh the aroma...

Of freshly baked bread! Yum! I've been wanting to try my hand at making some homemade bread for quite some time now and tonight I actually got the itch to do it. For some reason, I get these brilliant ideas at 8 or 9 at night! But anyways, so at 8pm I started making my dough for my bread. I have been checking out this website called Hillbilly Housewife and she has some great recipes on there. I had heard some great things about her recipes so I thought I would try one out for myself. The recipe I used for the bread was the "beginners bread" recipe on her website. I used regular flour but I added some ground flax seed into mine, but you can leave it out and just follow her recipe if you want. I'm all about adding my own touch, if you couldn't tell already. The recipe was pretty simple to follow, especially since this was my first time. I got a great arm workout while kneading the dough for 5 minutes straight. I can't even describe to you how great my house smelled this evening while my dough was rising for about 2 hours. Then I got to bake it and the smell just intensified. It was like walking into a bakery first thing in the morning and taking that big whiff of fresh baked bread. It is almost intoxicating!! But I have to say that from the looks of it, my bread turned out great!! The taste is even better! I cant believe that making my own bread was so simple and tastes so great compared to the store bought stuff. How can you even compare the two? Even if you aren't the savy baker, I highly suggest you try this recipe and make your own fresh bread. It was so easy and very therapeutic to beat the crap out of a dough ball. I think next time I will try and make honey wheat bread and see how that turns out! Here is my creation to inspire all you bakers out there! Enjoy!