I was so excited when I finally purchased The Bread Baker’s Apprentice a few weeks ago but then my first try at one of his formulas (I love that he calls them that!) was a complete bust and I ended up with sourdough that was hard as a rock. I threw my potholders down in a fit and swore off bread for a week.

Today I was finally brave enough to give the book another go. I decided to go for the Multigrain Bread Extraordinaire as it’s one of the few recipes in the book that doesn’t require a starter. It does need some grains to be soaked overnight, but I soaked them for about 5 hours this morning and it turned out fine. Shh, don’t tell Mr. Reinhart!

This bread is truly amazing. Look at how huge it was:

Unfortunately I went overboard with the flour. I guess I was expecting a really sticky dough and it just wasn’t. Also, I forgot to announce my usual ‘Touch the food before pictures are taken and you get kicked in the face’ so my husband took a chunk off the end before I could stop him. Grr!

But like I said, it was amazing. The oats and rice aren’t noticable but you can definitely tell there’s something different in it. It’s soft, but chewy. Definitely one of my new favorites.

I’m not going to post the recipe because it’s forever long and I also want to encourage you to buy the book. A week ago I would’ve told you not to buy the book but all it took was this one little recipe to change my mind. Seriously, go buy it.

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