Rustic Italian Bread

I just pulled these babies out of the oven! Man, they smell great. Maybe I should have painted them with egg white before they went in to give them some gloss.

The recipe is from Cookography, a food website like this one. It's a little involved. We'll see if it's worth the trouble. The bread is started the day before, mixing a little yeast with some flour and water and letting it raise for 3 hours. On baking day, the rest of the dough is made and combined with the fermented dough. This rises basically 3 times and is then made into loaves and baked. See the recipe for details. I'll add a crumb shot later and let you know how it was. These were very light and feathery and had good flavor. The crust was crisp and chewy.