If you haven’t heard about the no-knead bread craze popularized by a New York Times article last year, you are missing out. Dirt easy to make and wonderfully crusty and delicious, no-knead bread is very amenable to modifications. Of course for my first attempt I couldn’t do just a simple white bread. I had to doctor it up. The basic recipe ingredients for the standard bread are:
3 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp yeast
1 1/2 cup water
That’s it! Just mix it up, cover it with plastic, and let it rise for about 18 hours. Fold the dough a few times and let it raise in a bowl with a floured towel inside. Let it rise again for a couple of hours. Pop it into a hot cast iron pot in a 500 degree oven. Bake it for 30 min covered and 15 minutes at 450 degrees uncovered.
For my bread I substituted one cup of all purpose flour with 1 cup of whole wheat flour. I added 1/2 cup of dehydrated onions and 1/2 cup of my sourdough starter that I have been culturing for a couple of months. I was very pleased with the results. It has a terrific chewy crackly crust and a soft moist interior. I let the second rise go for 2.5 hours but it probably could have risen even more.
For video tutorials on the no-knead bread method (and lots of other good information about bread) check out the breadtopia web site.
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