Thursday, January 24, 2013
Amazing No-Knead Bread - EASY! EASY! EASY!
You will find the complete recipe at the bottom of this post. I originally found this while cruising Pinterest, indulging in food porn while on HCG. Now don't everyone go get their panties in a twist. Food porn is just reading recipes of all the foods you can't have right now and dreaming of the day you can again eat that item. I know you had your minds in the gutter!
So Back to the story of this bread. I was looking at the recipe on Frugal Living NW This is a great blog by the way. Spend some time there you'll find a lot to interest you. The original recipe came from My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method by Jim Lahey
My husband likes hard crusty bread, I do not. But, he eats a lot more bread than I do so that is the kind of bread we have most around the house. I make Sourdough Walnut Cranberry Bread for him a couple times a month and he will eat it every morning for breakfast. I bake it in clay pots.
The photo above shows the dry ingredients all mixed together and then the water added. As I wanted to experiment a little with the flour, I changed the recipe to 3 cups Spelt and 3 Cups all-purpose flour and
3 cups of water.
This photo shows what it looks like all mixed together. It's very moist and sticky. Then cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise for 12 to 18 hours. This is great to start in the afternoon and let rise in a warm dry place overnight. As it is so cold here right now I turned on the oven light and sat it in my oven. Notice the boxes behind my bowl? They are my industrial size boxes of foil and plastic wrap. As I use them almost daily I grew tired of digging them out of the cabinet so I covered them with scrapbooking paper to match my kitchen. Sooooo much cuter than the original boxes.
My dough had too much water so I was unable to shape it as they show in the recipe. So I just pulled the dough away from the sides of my bowl with my spatula and sprinkled flour along the sides of my bowl as I did this. I did this pull and fold over at each quarter turn sprinkling flour along the sides as I went. Then lightly sprinkle a little flour over the top. I put it back to rise again for a couple of hours, covering the bowl with a tea towel instead of plastic wrap. In the bottom of my pre-heated corning ware dish I inserted parchment paper. Then taking my spatula I pushed the dough into the dish, put the lid back on and placed it in my pre-heated oven. You are supposed to bake this bread in a Dutch Oven. I did not have one so I decided to try using my corning ware. I will be getting a Dutch Oven but, I did like how the bread looked in it's round shape.
The extra moisture in my mixture did make a denser loaf. My husband gave it a 7 1/2 out of 10 and said he will definately eat it as sandwich bread. This is one of the easiest ways of making bread outside of the bread machine.
Basic No-Knead Bread this recipe came from FrugallivingNW
slightly adapted from Jim Lahey's, My Bread
6 cups bread flour (recommended) or all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
1/2 t. instant or active-dry yeast
2 1/2 t. salt
2 2/3 c. cool water
- In a large bowl, combine the flour, yeast, and salt. Add the water and stir until all the ingredients are well incorporated; the dough should be wet and sticky. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let the dough rest 12-18 hours on the counter at room temperature. When surface of the risen dough has darkened slightly, smells yeasty, and is dotted with bubbles, it is ready.
- Lightly flour your hands and a work surface. Place dough on work surface and sprinkle with more flour. Fold the dough over on itself once or twice and, using floured fingers, tuck the dough underneath to form a rough ball.
- Generously dust a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with enough flour, cornmeal, or wheat bran to prevent the dough from sticking to the towel as it rises; place dough seam side down on the towel and dust with more flour, cornmeal, or wheat bran. Cover with the edges or a second cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours, until it has doubled in size.
- After about 1 1/2 hours, preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place a 6-8 quart heavy covered pot, such as a cast-iron Dutch oven, in the oven as it heats. When the dough has fully risen, carefully remove pot from oven. Remove top towel from dough and slide your hand under the bottom towel; flip the dough over into pot, seam side up. Shake pan once or twice if dough looks unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes.
- Cover and bake for 40 minutes. Uncover and continue baking for 10-15 more minutes, until the crust is a deep chestnut brown. The internal temperature of the bread should be around 200 degrees. You can check this with a meat thermometer, if desired.
- Remove the bread from the pot and let it cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.
My adaptation was to use 3 cups of Spelt and 3 cups of all-purpose flour and 3 cups of water as Spelt takes more moisture. Now on to my next cooking adventure!
So Back to the story of this bread. I was looking at the recipe on Frugal Living NW This is a great blog by the way. Spend some time there you'll find a lot to interest you. The original recipe came from My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method by Jim Lahey
My husband likes hard crusty bread, I do not. But, he eats a lot more bread than I do so that is the kind of bread we have most around the house. I make Sourdough Walnut Cranberry Bread for him a couple times a month and he will eat it every morning for breakfast. I bake it in clay pots.
The photo above shows the dry ingredients all mixed together and then the water added. As I wanted to experiment a little with the flour, I changed the recipe to 3 cups Spelt and 3 Cups all-purpose flour and
3 cups of water.
This photo shows what it looks like all mixed together. It's very moist and sticky. Then cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise for 12 to 18 hours. This is great to start in the afternoon and let rise in a warm dry place overnight. As it is so cold here right now I turned on the oven light and sat it in my oven. Notice the boxes behind my bowl? They are my industrial size boxes of foil and plastic wrap. As I use them almost daily I grew tired of digging them out of the cabinet so I covered them with scrapbooking paper to match my kitchen. Sooooo much cuter than the original boxes.
The extra moisture in my mixture did make a denser loaf. My husband gave it a 7 1/2 out of 10 and said he will definately eat it as sandwich bread. This is one of the easiest ways of making bread outside of the bread machine. slightly adapted from Jim Lahey's, My Bread
6 cups bread flour (recommended) or all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
1/2 t. instant or active-dry yeast
2 1/2 t. salt
2 2/3 c. cool water
- In a large bowl, combine the flour, yeast, and salt. Add the water and stir until all the ingredients are well incorporated; the dough should be wet and sticky. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let the dough rest 12-18 hours on the counter at room temperature. When surface of the risen dough has darkened slightly, smells yeasty, and is dotted with bubbles, it is ready.
- Lightly flour your hands and a work surface. Place dough on work surface and sprinkle with more flour. Fold the dough over on itself once or twice and, using floured fingers, tuck the dough underneath to form a rough ball.
- Generously dust a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with enough flour, cornmeal, or wheat bran to prevent the dough from sticking to the towel as it rises; place dough seam side down on the towel and dust with more flour, cornmeal, or wheat bran. Cover with the edges or a second cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours, until it has doubled in size.
- After about 1 1/2 hours, preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place a 6-8 quart heavy covered pot, such as a cast-iron Dutch oven, in the oven as it heats. When the dough has fully risen, carefully remove pot from oven. Remove top towel from dough and slide your hand under the bottom towel; flip the dough over into pot, seam side up. Shake pan once or twice if dough looks unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes.
- Cover and bake for 40 minutes. Uncover and continue baking for 10-15 more minutes, until the crust is a deep chestnut brown. The internal temperature of the bread should be around 200 degrees. You can check this with a meat thermometer, if desired.
- Remove the bread from the pot and let it cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Challenge 4 - Recipe for ...
Friday, December 2, 2011
Sourdough Cranberry Walnut Bread
This is a no Knead Bread, easy to make and my husband's favorite breakfast bread. I have my own starter that I keep in the fridge. There are a couple of sites that I like for recipes and instructions. http://www.breadhealthy.com and http://www.chefkeem.com. You should be able to find instructions there about the stretch and fold method and starting you
r own starter.This third picture is of the dough after it has raised the 1st time. I use a stoneware bowl that I cover with a large plastic bag. After the 2nd stretch and fold I cut the dough in half , putting each half in a parchment pa
per lined proofing basket. In this 2nd picture you can see the proofing basket and the clay baking pot that I soak in water while the oven is heating up. I then pick up the bread by the parchment paper and put in the clay baker. You can see the parchment paper still in the baking pot. I found this to be much easier for me as I did not like cleaning up with out the parchment paper.
Here is a close up of the baking pot with the loaf of bread now removedfr
om the parchment.My Recipe
3 cups of whole wheat flour
2 cups of whole grain spelt flour
2 cups of water when using spelt without the spelt and using other flour only use 1 1/2 cups of water
3 Tablespoons of Honey
1 1/2 teaspoons of salt
1 1/2 teaspoon of yeast
1/4 cup starter
1/2 cup cranraisins and 1/2 cup chopped walnuts. (I'm guessing here on the fruit and nuts, as I don't measure, adjust to your taste)
Bake at 450 for 35 minutes with the lid on then another 10 minutes without the lid.
Add and stir all wet ingredients first then mix salt with flour and add to wet ingredients. Mix well. You should now have a wet, shaggy dough. Cover with a plastic bag and set in a warm, draft free area for 1 hour.
After 1 hour you are ready to do your first stretch and fold. To do this, separate dough from bowl with a dough scraper, add a little olive oil around the bowl so that dough does not stick to bowl, Then think of the dough having 4 sides. Grab the first side and pull up stretching the dough then fold it over to the other side of the bowl. Now rotate the bowl 1/4 turn and do the same maneuver until you have done all 4 sides. Now dust hands and bread with flour then cover again with the plastic bag. Do this a total of 3 times always recovering.
The last time divide dough and put into parchment covered proofing baskets. I only have one proofing basket so I found a corning ware dish about the same size of my other clay baking pot (not shown) and I use it as a proofing basket and it seems to work just fine.
Bake at 450 degrees in a preheated oven for a total of 45 minutes. 35 minutes with the lid on and 10 minutes without the lid.
After it has completely cooled on a wire rack, I store the bread in a ziplock bag with the parchment paper. Since we keep our bread in the refrigerator the paper seems to keep extra moisture from forming.
This recipe was adapted to fit our tastes. You would not normally add yeast to sourdough as the starter is your fermenting agent. The bread is very dense and moist. The cranberries add just the right amount of sweetness and the walnuts give it a lovely crunch. You can of course substitute fruit and nuts of your choice.
No comments:
Post a Comment