Legendary bread! I've made lots of bread over the years. Lots of ok bread, lots of doughy bread, lots of dry bread, very occasionally some pretty good bread. This is the first time I've ever made outstanding bread, with great crisp crust, big air holes & lovely chewy texture. I love it. My family loved it. We gorged ourselves till it was all gone. And I even cheated a little. I did it all in one day & wanted to serve it with dinner . It didn't get 6-7 hrs of rising time. It was maybe 5 at most. The dough had nice bubbles but nowhere near as big as the picture. I pressed on anyway. I figured it'd still have some air holes if I was lucky. It did. They were pretty good. I know they could have been better- next time. On top of that, when I divided the loaves, I laid them out on parchment in the baking position straight away after dividing, as opposed to right before I baked. I was short on time... And almost a disaster, I covered them with plastic wrap, not properly greased & when I pulled it off to bake, I spent a lot of time removing gummed on wrap from the loaves & kinda wrecking my bread. In spite of all this, it was still awesome. Imagine how much better if I stuck to the instructions...The steam worked great. I've done it plenty of times but never got a great crust like this. This stuff is heaven. I may make it every day for the rest of my life. So much better than any bakery anywhere ever. Can you tell I liked this recipe??!!

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