Second ever bread for me, following on the heels (pardon the pun) of an onion and caraway rye from Friday.
This is a rosemary and black pepper bread using the recipe in Nick Malgieri's "Bread".
Man, this was far easier than doing a rye! Shaping the ring was tricky (and it came out somewhat lopsided) and I could stand to do better with scoring it, but the bake came out well, evenly cooked, great taste, nothing to really complain about other than wondering what I am going to do with all this bread. The book doesn't have a photo of this one, I suspect the ring is supposed to be wider and have a bigger opening. I probably should've rolled it out to be a bit longer, it's rather tall.
Here's the crumb photo (bottom part is not grey, that's a shadow from the other slice). I think the air pockets and their distribution are about right?
I am not familiar with Nick Malgieri so I googled him and he has a site with videos. http://www.nickmalgieri.com/bread-videos/
If you scroll down there is one where he shows how to make a ring.