I swear with one hand on an Ina Garten Cookbook that this bread is easy to make.

I don’t mean easy like moving cereal from the Kashi box into a bowl. I mean easy like you had to climb a medium sized mountain, but on the top there was a field of Rag and Bone Blazers. The ROI is high on this recipe.

The other day I grabbed a baguette from the bread dude in Union Market (do not get the wheat baguette from this guy, it’s a trick) and realized I’d rather eat the cardboard from the box my recent Gilt purchase came in. I wanted some homemade real-ass bread. I’ve made hardcore French baguette recipes in the past. Recipes that essentially ask you to bathe the dough as it’s cooking while simultaneously giving it a Swedish massage. It’s a lot to ask for a piece of carb.

That’s why I am so jazzed about this recipe for Rosemary and Garlic Bread.

Mix in a large bowl 5.25 cups of flour with 6 roughly chopped gloves of garlic, 4 tsp of Sea Salt and a 1/3 cup chopped rosemary.

In another bowl/measuring cup mix two cups lukewarm water (warm enough that you wouldn’t drink it but not so warm that you could have an enjoyable bath at that temp) and sprinkle 2.5 tsp dry active yeast on top. This should get kind of murky and weird looking (rem sophomore year when your parents visited and you got one of everything Wal-Mart had to offer because they were paying?…if your yeast doesn’t foam up and get weird it means you haven’t bought a fresh packet since then and it’s expired). Let the yeast chill with the water for 3 minutes and then whisk in 0.25 cups olive oil. Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients bowl and stir.

K now dump everything onto a floured surface and knead for ten minutes. This is a real workout team. It’s partially why this recipe is so great- you don’t need a stand up mixer. The only consequence is you’ll be sore and your dance moves may be limited this weekend.  Sacrifices. If you don’t know how to knead bread dough(what?!) here’s a link.

Now this dough has to hang in a large oiled bowl for 2 hours. I suggest you spend this time going to the store to get the ingredients to make other recipes from this blog.

Set dough onto a floured surface and pat down to deflate. Divide in half and roll out each dough into a rectangle.

Now roll each dough up like you are rolling a… dough into a log. Place each log onto a floured baking sheet and dust with flour. Cover with a towel and go for a one to two hour run or nap while you wait for it to double in size.

Cut 3 slashes on top of each loaf and place in a 500 degree oven on the lowest shelf. Immediately reduce to 450 and bake for 20 minutes. Then reduce to 350 and bake for another 20 minutes.

LOOK AT THESE! AND THEY TASTE AMAZING?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

This recipe is a best friend.  No matter where you are, how you feel or who is there, you know you guys will always be best friends and that things will turn out okay.  That’s what Shrimp Scampi with Linguine is- your best friend.  I made it once, committed the recipe to memory, and will make it on the regs ‘til I die.

Shrimp Scampi with Linguine

{Whole foods on P street out of flat leaf parlsey… really effed me guys}

You hardly need anything for this recipe.  Have the butter/oil ready to go in the pan.  Pre-cut the parsley and garlic.  Pre-zest/juice/cut the lemons.  There.  Now when your friends come, this will literally come together in min, no max, 10 minutes and you will look like some sort of wizard.  The only expensive ingredient is the shrimp so I don’t want to hear any bitching as if this meal is unattainable  you.  Also- buy the shrimp peeled and deveined (unless you want to pull the intestine of the shrimp out yourself- yeah that’s what that black line is that they “devein”…mmmm).

So math was my jam during my K-12 years and it has served me well in grocery store adventures.  When you go to your fishmonger/whole foods (those are your options) to get your shrimp there will be different sizes. Here’s how this works and skip this if you don’t care/find it boring/suck:

K do you get the idea? As the count size goes down the shrimp size goes up.  Let’s be real, you can just pick some grab bag shrimp and it will be fine but don’t you feel better about yourself as a person now?

Lemon Ricotta Cookies

(Multi-tasking)

Similar to the olive oil muffin recipe, you have to wait until they cool for the final step aka frosting these guys. You could skip this step- if you’re psychotic. I wouldn’t though… I wouldn’t want to run into me and have me find out you hung these guys out to dry sans frosting.