My name is Lexy and I am a carb-aholic. Pasta, rice, sweets… you name it. Most especially, I love bread! There’s something simple yet divine about cutting into a crusty artisan bread or tearing into a chewy Cuban loaf.

Not terribly long ago, I believed that I couldn’t cook, let alone bake. What would happen if I put the wrong amount of leavener or salt or something? Kitchen disaster, clearly. Best to steer clear.

But there was still something calling me to try. Basic bread is so simple… yet so complex. I had to give it a whirl.

I started with a no-knead artisan bread. Flour, water, yeast, and salt. Nothing fancy. No crazy techniques. Just ingredients, mixed together with a lot of patience, to form adorable rounds of home baked goodness. That led to my first bread bowl – a beautiful hand-thrown ceramic one in green and purple in which I could bake a one pound loaf.

Then I found my grandmother’s challah recipe in a book she’d written out for me. There are family tales about my uncle helping her to knead the dough (“You need to knead it”) and the loaves disappearing before dinner time. They were supposedly sweet and fairly dense, like a fluffy, eggy cake.

When that came out delicious, I was hooked. I’ve been all-in on bread baking ever since.