Problem
You want to create a hash of a string.
Solution
Use the Hash::make() method.
$hashed_password = Hash::make($plaintext_password);
Discussion
Hashing uses the Blowfish algorithm.
See The bcrypt Wikipedia article.
You can also specify the cost parameter for hashing. This is a base-2 logarithm of the times the hashing routine is iterated.
$hashed = Hash::make($plaintext, array('rounds' => 10));
This will change the the cost parameter from the default of 8 to 10.
