Unemployment Bread

My whole week is unemployment themed, as August sets in and I've yet again been been turned down for full-time work. So I've been participating in unemployment-baking, unemployment-crafts and unemployment-spackling the holes we've accidentally put in the walls since we've moved in to our apartment. This isn't to say that I'm not working, exactly. I fill in hours here and there at the college where I am temporarily employed as extra help and hire myself out as a lifeguard wherever there is need this week or that week. And these things are great, they pay the bills and that's about all I can really ask. But they can vary week to week and that leaves me, at home, a lot.

So my take on unemployment bread is that you can't use any ingredients you don't already have in the house (or that you can't borrow from your super-great neighbor). This whole thing was spurred by my wonderfully oblivious-to-the-fantastic-world-of-flours boyfriend, who brought me home unbleached bread flour instead of unbleached all-purpose. Worse things have happened, and in this case, it couldn't have worked out better. And although it is still summer, and bread-making seems so much more appropriate during the cool days and nights of early fall, this is New England and it was really fricken cold last night.

I could have made some simple white or wheat bread (not to suggest any part of bread making is really simple, it is much more of an art) but I have a hard time prompting Ethan to eat a whole loaf of something that is essentially... just bread. So in my pre-baking research I stumble across this beauty: Dill Bread (via smittenkitchen.com) and adapted from my other kitchen-must-have, Joy of Cooking. And although it sounds really delicious, I made it mostly since I knew there was a half-eaten container of cottage cheese in the back of the fridge. And really any bread recipe that calls for cottage cheese is okay in my book.

The best part of this bread is that it looks and smells absolutely wonderful. The dill+red onion combination is really a thing of beauty. The addition of honey and wheat germ gives it a sweet/nutty undertone. And aside from that, its a pretty standard yeast-bread: knead, wait, deflate, wait, bake.