Monday, December 04, 2006

Our daily bread

For a few weeks now, the amazing no-knead bread from the New York Times has been my go-to bread recipe at home. It's awesome, too easy to be believed, and so good it can practically put your favorite bakery out of business.

No kneading! All it asks of you is to plan in advance, so it can sit for 18 hours doing all the work by itself.

I don't get why a lot of the bakers posting about it claim it doesn't fit their schedules, either. Take me. It's 10 pm here now. If I throw the basic ingredients (flour, salt, yeast, water) together now and shove it in a bowl inside my microwave to sit, its 18-hour window will go by at about 4 pm, so it can even sit a few more hours until I get home from work (more sitting is good). Then if I did get home at 6, I put it out on the cornmeal-dusted towel (don't use flour, no matter what they say) for 2-3-4 hours, then bake. Fabulous bread in 24 hours, with about five minutes of actual work. Can't beat that.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Gael. THANK you for the bread recipe link and tips. This looks wonderful and I cannot wait to try it. I've never made bread before, but have glanced through a few recipes. This one doesn't mention the temperature of the water to be added. Does the water need to be warm? Cool? Hot? Thanks again!

Anonymous said...

man, that's some good bread.

i do use flour, b/c i like how it tastes when toasty on the crust, but i use wax paper instead of a towel to solve the sticking problem.

Anonymous said...

Have you tried adding sugar to this bread at all? I find I don't like bread if it doesn't have at least a couple tablespoons of sugar, but I'm worried it might do something weird to this bread recipe if I tried that.

Anonymous said...

Hi,

To the anonymous who asked about the water temperature -- most bread recipes call for "lukewarm" water; if it's too hot or too cold you kill the yeast and it doesn't work. (I've learned this the hard way.)

I have my own question -- do we think a ceramic mixing bowl would work for a baking pan?...

Anonymous said...

I made this yesterday (well, baked it yesterday--started it on Monday night), and it turned out really well with a nice sourdough note to it. Not perfect--if anything, my oven might have been too hot--but really good, and a nice change. I usd pyrex (bowl-and-pie plate combo), I think next time I'm going to foccacia it up with chopped garlic and and fresh rosemary. Very yummy, very easy.