Bake a type of bread you've never tried before.

“Reinhart’s focaccia is not like any bread I’ve made before. It’s slow, requiring at least a day of advance planning to leave time for its trademark overnight fermentation, though the time spent in actual bread-making mode is quite short. It’s also so wet and sticky that you can’t knead the dough outside of the bowl (a fact I found mildly distressing as squishing a viscous, stubborn sludge inside a bowl is not nearly as much fun as slapping it around on the countertop). Any possible misgivings I might have had while making it, however, were more than made up for the instant it was out of the oven and had cooled enough for me to sink my teeth into. This was hands-down the best focaccia I have ever had. I don’t even know how to describe it properly – it was both light and substantial, chewy and soft, wonderfully irregular in shape and texture. And the taste… It was like the very essence of bread, full of fermented yeast and nutty flour and hot oven, permeated but not overwhelmed by a delicate parade of herbs, garlic, oil, and a tongue-tickling sprinkle of spicy chili.”

“The sourdough loaves unfortunately came out like bricks. My friend had warned me that the dough would be very wet, but I was thoroughly unprepared for just how difficult it would be to mix and proof. I spent ages kneading the dough by hand, and instead of retaining a round shape during the final proofing, the loaves sort of oozed into puddles. They didn’t taste bad- in fact, the flavour was complex and slightly tangy from the starter- but the texture was much too dense and chewy.”

“And then, the no-knead bread. I was skeptical of this one. Was it really possible to dump flour, water, yeast, and salt in a Dutch oven and arrive at a scrumptious bread just like that? To add to my skepticism, the dough was more liquid than solid after its initial rising. When I put it in the oven it looked like a gloopy mess, but 45 minutes later I opened the lid to reveal a beautiful loaf. The webbing was irregular and satiny, and the crust golden and crisp. In fact, it turned out so good that I seriously considered ditching all the other breads on my list and spending the remainder of my project making variations of the no-knead bread!”