Bread-baking, part trois

Winter is full-on here in Mountain View, and it has nothing to do with the storms that have been pounding us this past weekend. Here, the tell-tale sign that winter has arrived is that several of us at any given moment are baking bread-- or attempting to.

My bread-baking frequency is usually directly correlated to how much choir music I have to study; the 10-20 minutes of kneading time is a great time to study music. It makes me feel productive to both be able to bake bread and learn my music at the same time.

However, lately, I've been into trying no-knead bread. Version one was a 3-ingredient beer bread that was easy as pie. Version two was my attempt at combining Mark Bittman's no-knead bread recipe and another more recent version featured in the NYT. My brilliant idea to "average" the two recipes was my attempt to compensate for things like the lack of dutch oven and lack of measuring cup that measures to the one-eight of a cup (not to mention lack of apartment that stays 70 degrees for 18 hours straight). It turns out that when it comes to baking bread or things that involve exact measurements, averaging two recipes that call for totally different quantities of things doesn't really work.

Inspired by my downstairs neighbor's superior bread outcome, this time I set out to make the Cook's Illustrated version, "No-Knead Bread 2.0", vowing to follow directions. I tried the variation that called for Parmesan cheese, rosemary, and olives.

Due to my apartment's lack of proper insulation, I think it was too cold for the bread to properly rise. Here it is pre-baking:
And after it came out of the oven:
It came out a lot better than the last time. Not quite Tartine Bakery, but the crust actually came out resembling pictures in the Cook's Illustrated magazine this time.
I'm sure the addition of Parmesan cheese and rosemary and olives helped as well. As for the interior. . . taste-wise, I like it, but it is supposed to look more like this. Mine did not have nearly as many air holes: Still, this is an improvement from the last time. Then again, last time, I did not follow any directions, so perhaps this is nothing to write home about. :)

Well, air holes or not, it will be the perfect complement to the tortilla soup I have brewing on the stove as I write this.