On the Laravel News site they mention a new quickstart guide that's included in the official Laravel manual now, walking you through the creation of a simple "to do" list application and introducing you to the framework.

The Laravel documentation now includes a dedicated quick start section to guide you through creating a basic task list. For those new to the framework, this is an excellent guide to show you the basics but even the experienced can pick up new tricks. [...] To go along with the tutorial is a Github repo where you can view all the source and easily check it out to play around yourself.

The quickstart steps you through the entire process of creating the application, from a Composer create-project out to the task CRUD (create, read, update, delete) functionality. It shows the use of the Eloquent ORM, routing functionality, views, Blade templates and more. If you're new to the framework and want to check out what it's all about this is a great place to get started.