Baking bread

This is what I made today

Today was my day to bake breads. I do not like bread machine because they take up to much space in the kitchen and the bread does not come out as real as if it were made by hand.
I found this awesome bread recipe called Monsieur Montfort's French Bread  in an old Time-Life Cookbook and my breads are coming out perfect.Making these breads bring back memories of my Mother's weekly bread making rituals.

We always made sourdough breads. My Mother would get up at about 4am and start the dough.  She would put the starter dough in a big bowl, add some water, yeast and some flour then let it rest a little bit. After that she would  add more flour and salt and start kneading.  After a while she would cover the bowl and let it rise. At about 6am she would punch the dough down make three loaves each about 2lbs, place them in bread loaves baskets lined with a floured towel and let them rise again. The baskets defined the shapes of the loaves. Than, on the way to school we would take the loaf baskets to the the baker who had a huge clay oven ready for  breads. Usually there were about 30-40 loaves of all different sizes, shapes and flour combination. All the breads would continue rising on the shelves and women would analyze and comment on other people's breads:"This bread is too soft, she must have added too much water;" "Oh, this one is rising too fast, she put in too much yeast;" or  "Look this one is too flat", and so on, and on there were comments for every bread. Than, the baker would get every bread out of their baskets and one, by one re do them. Then he would put them on a a large wooden spatula that was sprinkled with flour and shove the breads in the hot oven. He was very skillful at putting all the breads in and arranging them in a way that they all got done just perfectly. Around noon women would come again to pick up their loaves.

Back to today. I love baking breads and I hope to start making different  types of breads, too.