Bread Baking

I've been snowbound, icebound and housebound. I am not complaining. It has not been bad. No, I have not been knitting. I'm not sure what I have been doing. Oh, I remember now. I've been shopping online, baking and reading. Yeah, that's it. That's what I've been doing.

I have a bunch of pictures on all my "i" devices (iPhone, iPad, iPad Mini) and my camera. Each time I took a set of pictures it was for a blog entry, mostly snow related.  Weather talk and forecasts, snow and ice, freezing temperatures? I became sooooo inured that I settled down with some good books. I became immersed in reading and buying cookbooks and kitchen gadgets. Amazon and UPS love me, USPS too.

I learned a lot. I can bake artisan bread in five minutes a day! "The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" by Jeff Hertzberg, M.D. and Zoe Francois is a wonderful cookbook! It's about dough. It's about bread and beyond. It's about baking bread from scratch using four simple ingredients: water, yeast, salt and flour--without proofing, punching or playing around. If you like bread, you'll love this method and the book.

As usual I'm late to the game. This wonderful no knead bread making method from long ago had a resurgence and became very popular in 2007 after a NY Times article spotlighting Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Street Bakery who was baking bread this way. It was not a new concept, but Lahey and then Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois and others brought it to the forefront.

In January 2014 I stumbled upon it via a food blog I follow that had a recipe for pumpkin bread bowls for serving soup and the rest is history--or in this case "my story."

Here is my first no knead bread. They are my pumpkin bread bowls resting before baking.

 One baked pumpkin bowl full of pumpkin soup.

My fascination led me to many books and You Tube videos. Ultimately I bought the Hertzberg/Francois book.

Yesterday I made half the basic recipe,  let it rise for two hours and refrigerated it overnight.

 

When I was ready to bake bread for lunch I took a grapefruit-sized hunk off,

"cloaked" it, shaped it, let it rest, while the oven heated. Then I floured it, scored it and baked it.

Once it had cooled enough I sliced it, buttered it and had two slices with lunch. So good!

Although I even take my book to bed with me, you don't have to buy the book. Visit breadinfive.com and find out everything you need to know to make your first loaves of no knead bread.

Bona Fide Knitter