Joyful Abode

I wanted to have some friends over to enjoy our vegetable garden’s bounty with us, so we decided to have a semi-last-minute get-together. But because lots of people were going out of town, we changed it to a few days later.

Which gave me time to figure out how to make bread.

I’ve tried to make homemade bread dough several times, mostly for pizza crust. First I had a major ERROR, then a success with the help of the bread machine, and then another bread-machine-less ERROR. It seems every time I touch yeast, bad things happen (except in the case of bread machine issues.

So I studied… my friend Catherine gave e a copy of The Joy of Cooking as a wedding gift, and it’s so helpful! I read and re-read the chapter on yeast breads, and then decided to go for it… keeping in mind that I needed PATIENCE for this.

And guess what! I did it! I made bread! NOT in the bread machine at all! I didn’t take photos of the process (maybe I was afraid that documenting it would make it not work), but here it is in the oven…

I used the Joy of Cooking white bread recipe, shaped into a thick baguette-ish shape, and brushed egg whites over top, then sprinkled with sesame seeds. I don’t have a baguette pan (though you can bet it’s on my wists now) or a pizza stone, so I inverted some cookie sheets, which worked decently well.

LOOK WHAT HAPPENED!

I FINALLY MADE BREAD!!! It took all day and a lot of patience, but it wasn’t hard at all. Yay!

Now, for the lasagna, I used The Pioneer Woman’s recipe as a base… but added zucchini and eggplant, and got rid of the cottage cheese in favor of a ricotta+egg+herb mixture. So my layers were noodles, ricotta, zucchini, mozzarella, sauce, noodles, ricotta, eggplant, mozzarella, sauce, mozzarella.

And a smaller cheese-free version for my friend Victoria, who doesn’t touch the stuff.

Oh, and did I mention the bread?

And when you add in  Pat’s salad, Victoria’s Amaaaaaazing Cupcakes, and  Leo’s cheesecake… it was such a delicious dinner!

The best part? There are two more (smaller) lasagnas in my freezer. The fun thing about lasagnas is you can make a bunch at once with very little extra work… and they freeze just fine!