Since we’ve been talking about food, what is it about fresh-baked bread that makes the house smell so good? There’s a grocery store two blocks away, and it’s just as easy for me to pick up their fresh-baked goods (they’re still warm, too). I think I’m pretty good at baking (quick breads, especially) but I’ve had no luck in the past with making anything that starts with yeast. Let me recap my epic failures.
About 8 years ago, I attempted to make a coffee cake. The “Rosy Red Coffee Cake” was a recipe from my “Great American Home Baking” binder cookbook. You know, the sort of cookbook that grows because you’re paying a few bucks a month and in return you receive myriads of recipe cards to fill your binder. I had such high expectations before I got married that I would try all the recipes. No such luck. But this recipe seemed so easy… yeast bread, cranberries, sugar, orange juice in a beautiful wreath. My wreath was all deflated, looked melted, and the bread itself… hard. Clearly, I must have killed the yeast.
About 4 years later, I tried to make cinnamon rolls from my aunt’s recipe. This recipe didn’t seem hard. I had a few years of quick bread recipes under my belt, so I thought, maybe my technique would be better this time. Pucks, hockey pucks, 12 of them.
Fast forward, April 2010. This time, this time I think I may have found a recipe I can count on. A recipe that has restored my faith in cooking with yeast… a No-Knead bread. (Aaaaah… the angels are singing for me.) You knead, I mean, NEED time – time for the dough to rise on its own. Don’t do this if you want your bread the same day. And where did I get this recipe? Actually, I saw Jim Lahey on Martha Stewart and heard him say “no knead bread”. I watched, and then thought, “Hmph, cool,” end of story. (Not like when I watched Good Eats with Alton Brown and he cut up a whole chicken, and did a southern fried chicken recipe. I ran to the store the next day, cut up my own chicken and made… fried chicken. Another story for another time.)
Actually, it was in the April 2010 Living magazine that they showed the no-knead bread (Pane Integrale) recipe and some step-by-step pictures. My one mistake: I used all-purpose flour instead of bread flour. In the magazine, they call for bread flour. In the television recipe, they call for either; I didn’t remember this. Everything else in the recipe was the same. I only realized I used AP flour after I had mixed everything and the dough was sitting to rise. Seriously, I thought, NOT AGAIN. I messed it up AGAIN! Well, let’s see how it turns out. Not to worry, though, because as you see from my pictures, I think everything turned out okay. Not a lot of fuss. I couldn’t have been happier about baking bread. It was really rustic, crusty on the outside and chewy on the inside. Lovely. I’ll try it again with bread flour next time.
Click here for some more of Jim Lahey’s recipes from the Martha show.
