No more store-bought bread in this house

A lot of people in this day and age probably don't know that to make your own bread, you really only need water, yeast, and flour. Since making this discovery, I've been trying to make all the bread that we eat. It doesn't take too much work time - just a bit of unattended time.

Using the book "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day," I have learned to turn out a pretty decent basic white loaf over the past year or so. I've also tried the 100% whole wheat variety and ended up with a loaf of bread that was like a lead weight, so I've gone back to regular white bread for now.

Not only does homemade bread taste amazing and make the house smell like a bakery, but it saves you money (in the age of the $4.99 loaf of bread) and allows you to control what's going into your bread (check out the ingredients list on store-bought bread - even the "organic" and healthy stuff - and you'll see about 30 ingredients that look like a page out of your college chemistry book).

Pictured above is a loaf I made last week using the basic French bread recipe in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. Doesn't that look tasty? And it's not that hard to do...