Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Happy Holidays!

Monday, December 25, 2006
I made Thanksgiving dinner and so, according to family tradition, I do not have to make Christmas dinner. This year Jim's sister had dinner, and, of course, I brought bread. I was planning to bake another version of butter-dipped dinner rolls, but the call of the no-knead bread was too strong for me to ignore. This time I used the same percentages of flour, water, yeast, and salt as the last time I made it, but I used Harvest King bread flour instead of King Arthur; I used about durum flour instead of whole wheat as about 15% of the flour; I used a different pan; and I sprinkled the dough with cornmeal instead of with wheat bran. Result: a totally different bread, with a very different texture and flavor.

This bread has the large holes and cracklingly crisp crust that I didn't get when I added whole wheat flour.

I loved that, but I think the flavor of the bread with added whole wheat flour is slightly superior. I think that my next experiment will be to use the same pan I used this time and use a small amount of whole wheat and a small amount of durum flour and perhaps also a bit more water and see what happens.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You must have been writing this while I was writing on the other posting. I quite liked the look of your other No-knead bread. I've made 7 now of this bread and just stick to original recipe. It always turns out like the NYT video. I like it but it lacks depth of flavour (unlike my perfect bagels!!) but it is good enough for so little effort and better than many store breads. Cheerio, Melinda

Marie said...

Good Lord! You've made seven loaves already? You should be writing a blog yourself.

Chubbypanda said...

The sight of this no-knead bread should have professional bakers shaking in their shoes. Why buy market bread when you can make bread like this in your own home?

- Chubbypanda

Marie said...

CP,
Yes, it does look pretty, doesn't it? Have you tried the no-knead recipe yourself yet? I don't think it has quite the same depth of flavor that some more traditional breads have, but you can't beat it for ease. I think it requires a total of about ten minutes attention before you put it in the oven (not counting all the hours of unattended time, of course).