If you think I made one heck of a loaf of French bread…think again. And read on below the fold!

Recently, a friend and I were talking about narcissism. Bloggers spend a great deal of timing writing into space, on our blogs and on Twitter, about ourselves, hoping people will read them, hoping people will like them, hoping people will like us.

We write about what we had for breakfast, we write about our dogs, our kids, our boyfriends and our parents. We right about the trivial moments of our lives and we write about the most important moments in our lives.

Are we narcissistic or just outgoing? Do we have a lot to say or do we say too much?

I think that there is a boundary, a happy medium that’s defined by how genuine you are. Is it all good, all the time? Or are you just sharing stories from your life as they happen, when they happen, because you havre a passion for that?

Well, I talk about my great cooking all time but I’m going to be honest with you when I tell you about this week’s Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge: it was a flop.

I. Am. Bad. At. Hearth. Baking.

When you bake certain types of breads from the book, Peter Reinhart instructs you to replicate a traditional hearth with your home oven, using a baking stone and creating steam by spraying your oven walls with hot water.

At some point between the second proof and that second spray of water, I ruin the bread. I gave French bread the old college try but it wound up looking as though it would be more useful in batting practice than in a bread basket.

Since the smell of bread baking had left me with a craving for a crusty piece of bread alongside the salad I was having for dinner, I did what any rational, resourceful, twenty-something woman would do.

And it was delicious.