Day Old Bread

Friday afternoon began with 2 loaves of homemade bread.

After assembling a batch of challah dough and leaving it for an hour in an oiled bowl, I peeked under the moist towel and had one of those "mmmmmm. . . is that going to rise?" moments. Another 30 minutes went by and no sign of puff.

So, as my bread neuroses continued to rise and the dough did not (be advised, watching a bowl of dough does not make it rise), I decided to turn to my old faithful: foccacia. Mix the yeast in water and sugar, wait, add the rest of the liquids, and add in the flour and salt.

After the foccacia backup bread was left in the bowl to rise, things quickly changed course. Maybe the challah was jealous, maybe it was the competition, but whatever the reason, that challah dough began to rise. And rise. And rise. Then the foccacia joined in. This was a dough drag race if I'd ever seen one.

It wasn't too long that I realized 2 large loaves of bread would decorate our table that night.

And decorate they did. The regal, glossy, deep brown, 16-inch braided challah sat side by side with the rounded, golden, salt topped, steamy foccacia. A Jewish Italian bread feast.

And then came the leftovers.

Since family was visiting for the weekend and many more meals were to be made, this was my chance to turn my bread into something else over the course of the weekend (and possibly to save time cooking). Time to make lemonade.

Nothing too creative came of the challah actually. While I could have created stuffed french toast with sweet ricotta or a savory bread pudding. the challah toasted with butter was our simple and heavenly morning mainstay.

Sunday afternoon lunch with the leftover foccacia was a different story. Cut into cubes, toasted with olive oil on the stove top, and tossed with chopped fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic, olive oil, rice vinegar, salt, and pepper, this lunch for 4 was prepped in 20 minutes flat. We were salivating before, during, and after our meal. Had my dry white beans been cooked, they would have been tossed in for the protein.

And Sunday night was the pizza feast. The dough, prepped Saturday evening, in between family conversations and playing Boggle, was formed into 8 discs and par baked for Sunday night pizza with the fam. The pizza was so good, no leftovers remained.

A wonderful weekend and the bread saw us through.