The Joys of Baking

Over the last few months I have been working on my bread making skills.  Since we have been married we have never bought bread at the store.  About every 2 weeks I bake a batch and we freeze a few loaves and it lasts us quite a while.  Lately, I have been looking for yummy new recipes to try. 

Yesterday I made Cinnamon Burst Bread (like Great Harvest).  This was the second time I have used this recipe.  The first time the bread turned out wonderful except for the cinnamon bursts.  You can either buy cinnamon bites or you can make them yourself.  I just made them myself and they dissolved in the bread, so instead of having bursts of cinnamon the whole bread had a slight cinnamon taste.  It was still good but I really wanted to make it right.  

The next time I tweaked the recipe a bit and was delighted when I took the bread out of the oven and cut a slice and saw bursts of cinnamon!  I was pretty proud of myself and quickly cut off a big slice and handed it to Andrew.  He took a big bite and I waited patiently for him to tell me it was amazing, instead he says "This doesn't taste very good.." I took a bite of my slice and wanted to spit it out.  Something was very wrong with this bread.  I later remembered that I hadn't added the salt.  I did some research on salt in bread and discovered that leaving out the salt caused my bread to over rise and be tasteless. 

Here is a picture of my beautiful tasteless bread:

P.S.  I am not opposed to buying bread and I highly doubt I will continue to make bread instead of buying it for the rest of my life.  I am just baking for fun :)