Yeast Dough for a Crusty White Bread

This was the first thing I decided to make from the book.  Unfortunatley after 7, yes 7 attempts at making this bread, it failed every time.  The consistency was too wet, and even after adding more flour, it unbalanced the ingredients and failed to rise very much.  The bread contained every thing you would use to make a cake, and had a spongy consistency and tasted too sweet for a loaf of bread, and was more like challah bread.

If that wasnt enough, the time it took to make it was another thing to put anyone off.  A total of 4 hours and 10 minutes it took me to make this bread from mixing, rising, proofing, plaiting, rising, cooking and cooling. Way too long and I dont think Tatiana would have used this recipe.

In The summer Garden (the third book from the trilogy) Tatiana baked bread at night so it would be ready to cook in the morning, she would need to be up extremely late if she used this recipe and is unrealistic.

I do however think the recipe I used on this loaf in the picture is more realistic to what she would have baked as it was done in half the time, and actually tastes like bread is meant to with the simple key ingredients of flour, yeast, water, salt and sugar. No eggs, no milk and less than half the sugar in Paullina Simons recipe for this.