Greek Artisan Bread

I've never made a hard-crust bread, but always wanted to. Fascinatingly, this bread recipe is traditional Greek peasant bread. The entire process took three hours, but that was three hours of my life I would have wasted anyway. It was pretty easy, and not that different from normal bread. It's really dense, and hearty!

2 TBSP dry yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1/2 cup flour
8 cups of flour
2 TBSP salt
2 1/2 cups lukewarm water
2 TBSP milk
2 TBSP olive oil
2 TBSP honey (if you don't have honey, don't worry about it)

Dissolve yeast in lukewarm water. Slowly add the 1/2 flour and mix until all lumps are gone and it forms a thick liquid. Rise for 15-20 minutes.

Mix remaining flour with salt in in a large mixing bowl, and make a well in the center. Add oil, honey, milk, yeast mixture, and 2 cups of the water in the well. Pull in the flour slowly and mix with hands until the dough starts to form a ball. (Seriously, do it with your hands!) If you need more water, add small amounts from the remaining 1/2 cup. (I used about 1/4 cup) On a floured surface, knead until smooth and doesn't stick to your hands.

Put dough in a lightly oiled mixing bowl and roll until all sides of the dough are lightly oiled. Cover the bowl with 3 dishtowels: one dry, one dampened with warm water (wring it out people), and the other dry. Rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1-1/2 to 2 hours.

Punch down and knead for 5-6 minutes on a floured surface. It will be extremely hard to knead, but keep going! Divide the dough into three loaves and form into round (or oblong baguette-shaped) loaves. Place several inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets and cover with the dishtowls again. Rise in a warm place for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 450'. Score the tops of the loaves 3-4 times and bake for 30-35 minutes until browned. Eat it with jam while it's still hot! YUM!