10.2.11

a moment of comfort

no-knead bread!
wow, thanks everyone for your bread-making suggestions! because of the help, this loaf worked much better than the last, and has me on a roll (wow, dorky unintentional pun). the idea of having homemade loaves of bread in the house has always appealed to me, but I was not given a knack for baking. thank goodness for jim lahey and his no-knead revolution.

i was so excited to be able to use our cast iron camping dutch oven for this recipe. i think it made a big difference, and got me all nostalgic for the summer and sleeping outdoors. maybe i'll perfect my bread making skills this winter and try a campfire version during camping season!

for this loaf, i mostly stuck to this recipe which is based on jim lahey's famous ny times no-knead recipe. this video of him on the martha stewart show really helped me out too, so thanks for passing that on allison! there was a bit of discrepancy between the couple recipes i was following about the amount of water, so i started with 1 1/3 of a cup, and kept adding a tablespoon extra at a time. i probably used about 1 1/2 cups total, but it wasn't too hard to figure out how much water was enough. i used half bread flour and half whole wheat, because i sort of prefer whole wheat bread. it was delicious!

after having to smell the bread baking in the oven, it was torture waiting that last hour for the bread to cool. but my goodness, was it ever worth the wait. mmmm... with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar... i think it's time for another slice!

5 comments:

  1. or toasted, with strawberry rhubarb jam in the summer? mmm bread.

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  2. Have you checked out the Tartine Bread book? Seriously, the best tips for bread making, as well as this gorgeous video: http://vimeo.com/14354661

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  3. Yay! I'm so glad you had good luck with it :) I forgot to mention that there is a whole wheat version of Jim Lahey's recipe in an old issue of MSLiving. Weirdly, it's not on her website though. In case you want to compare what you tried with that recipe, I believe you use 3/4 cups whole wheat flour and 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour. The whole wheat recipe calls for active dried yeast instead of the instant, so I researched a conversion and ended up using 1/2 tsp of the instant (rather than 1/4 for white bread) and it worked great. I always use the wheat bran for dusting which goes great with the whole wheat recipe. Happy baking :)

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  4. ditto Kimberly...
    I've eaten the Tartine Bread and it is to die for (so if you're ever in San Francisco it's a must try-especially when eaten as a grilled sandwich)-
    I've never tried making it yet though as it does look like it takes time...it's on my list to try this year...

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