After reading all of Heather's (from Simple - Green - Frugal) wonderful posts on baking bread and drooling over all the pictures, I finally got up the gumption to try. This was my first ever attempt to make bread.

I had this recipe for Barbecued Flank Steak Sandwiches served on hoagie rolls from a Cooking Light magazine that I wanted to try. So, last night for dinner I did. My local bakery does not have hoagies and I did not want to drive into town for a bag of buns. I know, I can make them! A quick internet search led me to this recipe. I only needed four rolls and it makes 18, but I thought I should have some backups in case something went horribly wrong in baking. (I have an extremely unpredictable oven.)

I gathered all my ingredients and noticed I was out of yeast, damn. I am not a bread baker, but I always have yeast on hand for one dish chicken parmesan. (Which we like to call deep dish chicken pizza. Hubby calls it lasagna??) So, it's off to the store I go. The small local grocery store, not the one I would have to drive to in town. As I am pedaling to the store, I remember it is Wednesday. Farmer's Market! Picked up some lovely tomatoes for tonight's lasagna and the flowers in the background. Back to the bread. I have all my ingredients gathered and food processor ready. Making the dough itself was fairly simple and straightforward, thanks to my food processor. Even the kneading went well. Time to rise. Left the dough in a giant bowl on top of the fridge while I tended to the laundry. 45 minutes later I had a nice big bowl of dough.

This is where things got a bit sticky for me. The recipe said to divide the dough into 18 pieces and shape into an oval. Okay.... a long oval? small oval? large oval? flat oval? I do not know. I know what hoagies are supposed to look like. You know, when they come out of a bag. I made some long and flat and some small and puffy. Good thing I had 18 to play with. Okay, so I got them all shaped and covered to rise another 20 minutes. Unfortunately I only have three baking sheets and can only fit three rolls per pan. So I left the rest to rise on the counter. I remembered I had a bowl of egg whites in the fridge leftover from the lemon bars, so I decided to give them an egg wash. I know I have seen this done before. Haven't I? Well, the first batch of egg washed ones came out all shiny, but not very dark. Butter. I saw Emeril put butter on biscuits the other day on Emeril Green. For color and flavor he said. Well, the butter ones were even lighter than the egg wash. Hmm??? How do you get that beautiful golden color on baked bread?

The recipe also said with scissors to cut a 1/4 inch slash across the top of each. So I did. I cut a 1/4 inch long slash running parallel with the roll. Once baked you couldn't even tell it was there. More like a dimple than anything. Okay.... maybe it was supposed to be a 1/4 deep slash the length of the roll? That made more of an impact. Kind of opened the top of the roll up, making it wider.

All was going well. My rolls didn't look much like hoagies or have any color. But they smelled great! Then I got to the ones resting on the counter. Note to self: Next time put resting dough on parchment paper! They were stuck to the counter and when I moved them they deflated. Those one came out somewhat flat. Sliced in half they fit perfectly in the toaster. I had one for breakfast with natural peanut butter and homemade strawberry jam. Yum! We used them as hot dog buns at lunch. They also worked well as garlic bread with tonight's dinner.

All in all, it was a good experience that I will try again. Just wish I could get more rise and more color. But as Heather said, "even the mess-ups taste good".