Fifty cent bread

I love the Ace Bakery, especially the olive loaf. Unfortunately their breads are not 50 cents, they are usually between 3 and 5 $.
Fortunately my friend Sarah gave me an excellent bread recipe which I have been using for over 6 months and it gives lovely loaves similar to Ace's, crusty and tasty, and costs generally less than two quarters!
Here is the recipe and a how-to video.

Since my dutch-oven pot is a bit wider, I use for cups of flour (3 white and one of either rye or hard whole wheat), and depending on the flour I add about two cups of water, a bit more than 1/4 tea spoon of yeast and 1 1/4 tea spoon of salt.

Three variations I love are:

• adding pumping or sunflower seeds to the flour
• adding olives and rosemary (reducing the salt a little if the olives are really salty)
• adding walnuts and chopped up figs (yum!)

Here are some that we made...