I baked bread today. I have baked bread more or less weekly since about January. I have this down. I know how to do this. Homemade bread is awesome. I took the lid off my dutch oven so the loaf could brown after a half hour of cooking, and then I promptly forgot about it until an hour later. Somehow, it did not burn. It seems to have the hardness of some kind of igneous rock, though. Dammit. Anybody want a bread rock?
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The one positive thing you could say about the bread products around him was that they were probably as edible now as they were on the day they were baked. Forged was a better term. Dwarf bread was made as a meal of last resort and also as a weapon and a currency. Dwarfs were not, as far as Vimes knew, religious in any way, but the way they thought about bread came close.
ā Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant
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Ok, Iām totally going to pretend I made dwarf bread. Thank you!
ETA: Sadly, I do not have a dwarf forged knife, and Iām not going to ruin my good bread knife by trying to cut this thing, so I think itās just going to be sacrificed.
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Pics or it didnāt happen 
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The picture is easy, but I canāt convey how hard this thing is through a picture. I would not want to drop this on my foot, even though it isnāt heavy.
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It looks gorgeous. I can totally picture it with part of several of my teeth embedded in it. And a tantalising taste of crust almost in my mouth.
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I got great oven spring on that loaf. Iām so pissed at myself. That bread was going to be amazing.
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Iād eat that.
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You could try.
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Hold my dentures.
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Ooh, you could shellac it and use it in the Thanksgiving centerpiece. Itās so pretty!
Bummer about the inedibility, though.
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hacksaw?
sawzall?
sledgehammer? (think of the croutons! further pulverize into fab breadcrumbs for topping a lovely mac-n-cheese bake, or a rustic panko coating on chicken or pork chops!)
noooo! donāt throw it away!
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You just made a lot of croutons or if you put it in a food processor, breadcrumbs.
Other uses include a thickener for soups like gazpacho.
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There is a thick soup calling for that loaf. I got my reciprocating saw ready.
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Itās perfect. Use a wide scalloped blade and enjoy.
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If you chisel off the top you could serve soup in it and that would soften the rest up to edibility.
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Ahhhh! I think youāve just explained what I did wrong last year. I attempted some fermented habanero and pineapple sauce inspired by your posts about fermented hot sauce. Although it only had one or two cloves of garlic to most of a pineapple and maybe 400g of habanero, the garlic was strong and tasted old. I was hoping for something fresh and sprightly, but this wasnāt it at all.
Iāll try again this year! No garlic and maybe juice the pineapple and add post-ferment.
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In my fermenting chillies I use about 15 cloves to the kilo of chilli and I worried that it would knock your socks off but it mellowed out beautifully.
AFAIK garlic is one of those things, like the tomatoes @FloridaManJefe mentioned above, that you need to be careful with air contact and botulism. Iām not an expert on pickling but anything Iāve made has smelt fresh and tasted clean. If it hasnāt. itās gone straight in the compost. (Iām thinking of you, failed sauerkraut).
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I thought about that, actually, but Iām not much of a soup eater. The other human in the house is, but thereās no way sheās going to go for a bread bowl.
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