Sunday, March 18, 2007
Wonder bread
I am a pretty active baker, what with being from a bread basket state and all, where the streets are paved in flour and wheat hulls. Muffins, cookies, and cupcakes (of course) are my most frequent projects, but I like baking bread when I have a few hours to spare. But now, sweeping through the internets and the newspapers from Portland, OR to Hartford, CT, comes the No Knead Bread, a revolution in bread baking. Malena made the bread and it looked beautiful. My mom said it reminded her of European bread. Everyone is saying it's really, really good.
The trade off? Is that you better have 24 hours between the urge to bake and the urge to eat, because it needs 18 hours to rise, another 2 hours for the second rise, 45-60 minutes to bake, and enough time to let it cool. Since it snowed this weekend and our cars were pretty well stuck, I had the time. Hurrah!
I used half whole wheat flour and half white flour, and what was probably too much salt. The top is dusted in oat bran. The whole thing was a very jiggly blob, very unlike traditional yeast bread. It all felt....wrong. And you know what?
It's magic bread! It really is delicious, all complicated and savory, with a mysterious hint of sweetness (there's no sweetener added). The crust is crackly and chewy, and the inside is soft but holds its structure. I think I better mix up another batch soon to try some variations. The recipe is apparently very forgiving, so you can add any kind of ingredients (herbs, cheese, dried fruit, etc.) to make a savory or sweet bread.
And while I found baking on a snowy Saturday cozy, I am currently finding doing laundry on a snowy Monday night to be tiresome. Enough snow, New England. Let's see some green.
The trade off? Is that you better have 24 hours between the urge to bake and the urge to eat, because it needs 18 hours to rise, another 2 hours for the second rise, 45-60 minutes to bake, and enough time to let it cool. Since it snowed this weekend and our cars were pretty well stuck, I had the time. Hurrah!
I used half whole wheat flour and half white flour, and what was probably too much salt. The top is dusted in oat bran. The whole thing was a very jiggly blob, very unlike traditional yeast bread. It all felt....wrong. And you know what?
It's magic bread! It really is delicious, all complicated and savory, with a mysterious hint of sweetness (there's no sweetener added). The crust is crackly and chewy, and the inside is soft but holds its structure. I think I better mix up another batch soon to try some variations. The recipe is apparently very forgiving, so you can add any kind of ingredients (herbs, cheese, dried fruit, etc.) to make a savory or sweet bread.
And while I found baking on a snowy Saturday cozy, I am currently finding doing laundry on a snowy Monday night to be tiresome. Enough snow, New England. Let's see some green.
