Bread baking

I'm currently at my parents' house in Northbrook, with very little to do except finish reading M.F.K. Fisher's The Gastronomical Me and progress in my Nintendo DS games. This afternoon, my sister Stephanie expressed a desire to "bake something." We decided to make bread, and I decided to try Nigel Slater's recipe as reported by the Amateur Gourmet here. Eight cups of flour seemed excessive, so we cut the recipe in half. Here we are posing ridiculously with the finished product. We're trying to make a heart, with the loaf at the bottom.

I am pretty happy with the results. The finished loaf is very salty and flavorful. The crust is not as thick and crisp as the one I achieved with the recent New York Times no-knead method, but it still cracked pleasantly under my teeth. The detail below shows the crumb, which is denser than ideal. Since the house is pretty cold, I think I should have let the second rise go longer than an hour. My family says the bread is delicious, though, so I hope there's still some left for me to share with Andy on the plane tomorrow back to San Jose.