Sunday, January 31, 2010

No Knead Bread


Today was my first attempt at baking bread from scratch, I have been visiting the breadtopia website for a while now reading about the No Knead Bread method of baking a Boule ( round loaf),but never have gotten up the nerve to give it a try, yesterday I got brave and mixed the ingredients up and let them rise for the recommended 18 hours, actually longer.

Today I am on to the second part of the recipe the shaping, second rising and the baking. The house was pretty cold when I got up this morning (for Florida), it was around 63 inside, I suspect the dough might have risen even higher if it had been a bit warmer. I proofed as directed the bread in a pine needle Indian basket dusted with wheat bran, the basket was one that my daughter gave me a while back that looked a lot like the proofing baskets at the website. Alternatively, I could have let it have a second rise on a floured towel. The basket rinsed out absolutely clean , I was afraid that it might not, and I set it in warm the oven as it cooled to dry out after the bread baking was done

I baked the bread in my cast iron oval dutch oven, which gave it a nice loaf shape instead of the round shape as seen in the demonstration video. The finished product was amazingly good. The crust was a bit harder then I would have preferred, I am going to have to keep experimenting with how to end up with a bit lighter crust. It was so hard I had to slice it with an electric bread knife. However, the taste was really good. My grandsons kept asking for more, and when we added butter and fresh Tangerine Marmalade to the warm bread it went from good to heavenly
I forgot to take pictures of the finished loaf before we had it almost gone. These are the last couple of slices. I will definitely be trying this bread and variations of it again on my next days off.

Here is a link to the site, the first short video tells you all you need to know to bake successfully, the second one is more of a way of advertising several of the products they sell. I have to say they have some pretty cool stuff , now that I am officially a bread baker I might have to invest in some real tools.

http://www.breadtopia.com/basic-no-knead-method/

I have yet to figure out how to move the pictures in my blog to appear chronologically, it seems they just end up wherever the choose to, and I can't figure out how to delete them once they are there without deleting the whole editorial.






8 comments:

  1. I have figured you have to put the last picture you want first, and go from there until the last picture is the one you want first. At least that's the way mine comes out. The bread looks delicious. I have never made bread ever. I want to but am afraid I guess. Not sure what I'm afraid of....maybe one of these days! ...debbie

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  2. The bread looks great! And like Debbie said...the photos load on TOP of each other,so work backwards,LOL...are you confooosed yet??? :0)Took me awhile to get it sorted too.
    Ive never made the no knead bread,just the regular way,might give it a go.

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  3. 63 sounds awfully chilly for bread rising. Maybe next time you try it out, let it rise in a warmed oven. I've found taking a 2 cup pyrex filled with hot, hot water keeps things just warm enough inside a closed oven to get a good rise. But, that's for kneaded bread. Don't know how warm the oven would stay over an 18 hour period.

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  4. The bread looks yummy. Nice "first time out" as far as I can tell! It sure looks good.
    As far as the pictures go... you can drag and drop them where ya want.

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  5. It looks yummy! i love making bread from scratch but it never turns out picture perfect.LOL
    I'm glad that I found you!

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  6. I see you stopped by my blog, thanks and have a look around. I have a number of bread recipes that are easy to make.
    Glad to see you tried a No-Knead bread, it's one of my favorites and so easy to make.
    The weather down here in Florida is miserable, just to cold this winter.
    A tip for rising regular bread is I turn on my oven for 30 seconds and turn it off, it takes the chill out and gets to about 80-90 degrees and stays warm for the rise.

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  7. Laura, I'm so glad you stopped by so I could find your blog! Don't you LOVE that bread? Mine always turns out a little different each time I make it. I practically make a loaf a day now. I'm so glad you are making it!

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  8. Your bread turned out great! We make the no-knead bread a lot here. Doing a long, cool rise seems to intensify the flavor. We raise it in the oven - we turn the oven light on for a bit to get the temp. up. If you try to raise it too quickly you will have trouble with the second rise. We got our recipe here - http://blackirondude.blogspot.com/2008/12/no-knead-bread-from-dutch-oven.html And we were hooked so we got the cookbook - My Bread by Jim Lahey - mostly all no knead adaptations with a recipe for some great pizza, too.

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