As I came back almost 20 hours later, the dough, which looked more like wet slop, was bubbly and quite large. The instructions said to put the mixture on a lightly floured surface, turn twice, and let rest for 15 minutes, then form into a ball. One look at my dough and I could tell that it would never form into a ball. At that very moment it was like a lava flow heading for the edge of the counter. My dough had way too much water in it. I thought back to yesterday when I thought it was rather bizarre that a recipe called for 1 5/8 cup of water (never seen that on a measuring cup). So, I gave it 1 1/2 plus a little more and called it good. Maybe I didn't measure my flour correctly...
Anyway, my hands were scary wet dough fingers so I called for Tom to help. He thought this was rather funny as he poured cup after cup of flour into the dough I was now ferociously KNEADING! Then he abandoned me to get the camera because he felt that you all should see this.
Luckily for me, I got the dough going and was onto the next step before he got back. This was his first shot.

The dough is now being formed into a ball and is getting ready to rise on top of a floured piece of spare muslin. It was supposed to rise for 2 hours and ended up rising for 4 hours. Remember what I said about forgetting about it. It finally got into the pot at about 10:30pm last night after a BBQ with some friends and a visit from a Medi-vac helicopter who landed in the field next to our apartment to airlift a car accident victim. I have great pictures of that to come soon.
After all the excitement I finally got back to the bread, popped it in the oven and hoped for the best. I got what I wanted.

The bread is brown, crusty and it made crispy crackly noises that I have never heard bread make before. Like Snap, Crackle, Pop. It smelled fabulous and the crust crunches so pleasantly when you press on it.

Perfect for Bruschetta or sliced with fresh jam.

And the taste was dreamy. Almost like sourdough, but not quite. It was the best basic bread I have made yet.

Here is the recipe for those folk who would like to try it. I will definitely make this again.