Better than a Bakery! Artisan bread for dinner in less than an hour.

There is nothing like still-warm-from-the-oven bread on the dinner table.

I absolutely love freshly-baked breads and muffins, but have always found kneading/rising and the intricacies of yeast to be daunting. It all just seemed like a lot of work when I can pick up a really nice loaf of bread at the bakery for a special dinner. Then I started hearing/reading about "no-knead artisan bread" and was intrigued. Finally, about two years ago, I stumbled across this "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, Seriously" post and decided to give it a try. 

Basically, it goes like this: dump ingredients into bowl, mix, cover loosely/let rise, put in fridge. Later, cut off dough, let sit, put in oven, eat yummy bread. Have I mentioned how my family raves about this bread? So, here it is again, with pictures. A printable recipe is here.

My ingredients: Flour (my "everyday" flour is a mix of unbleached white and King Arthur's white wheat), flaxseed meal, yeast, kosher salt, and warm water.

Put 1 1/2 Tablespoons of kosher salt and 1 1/2 Tablespoons of active dry yeast in a large bowl. If you are using the packets of yeast (this is what I bought at first), use two. Now that I make bread often, I buy yeast in bulk. I keep a jar of yeast in the fridge for regular use and store the rest in the freezer.

Add 3 cups of warm water (from the tap is fine). It should feel warm to the touch, but not hot.

Add 6 1/2 cups of unbleached all-purpose flour, using the "scoop and sweep" method to measure. This is a great place to experiment! Whole wheat, spelt flour, sprouted grains flour, etc. Here, I used 6 cups of my unbleached white/white wheat mix and 1/2 cup of flax meal. I love the subtle, nutty flavor of flax meal, it gives a beautiful color/texture to the bread, and it's also a really great thing to put into our bodies. 

Mix until there are no more dry spots of flour. You can use a mixer if you have one, but I don't and I wouldn't use it for this even if I did. Here I am about halfway mixed; it's coming together, but I still have spots of dry flour.

Here, it's well-combined and ready to rise! I scrapes down the bowl sides also. I have a lid for my bowl  with holes punched in the lid (more about that later), but you can just loosely cover your bowl with plastic wrap.

Bread rising: pictures from l-r at 2:30, 3:30 and 4:30, respectively. You can cut off a bit now for your first loaf or just pop it right into the fridge, which is what I did this time. I think the flavor develops better if it has some time to sit. With this amount of dough, I'll typically make three loaves over the course of 5-8 days. You can leave the dough in your fridge up to two weeks; it will develop more of a "sourdough" flavor as it sits.

You need to bake in a preheated, 450-degree oven. You can bake it in whatever you usually use in the oven: pyrex pan, pizza stone, cookie sheet, cast-iron skillet. I did try baking on a pizza stone with a little dish of water, but decided it was too fussy for me. Then I went searching for other options and loved the idea of using an enameled dutch oven as shown here at Oregon Cottage. I don't find that I need the parchment paper she uses and my dutch oven is quite large, but I use a little enameled stoneware baking with a lid. The crust comes out beautifully with this method! 

Whatever you use, I recommend preheating the dish in the oven.

Here is the dough the following afternoon when I took it out of the fridge. As you can see, it lost a bit of mass as it cooled. Sprinkle some flour on the top and dust your hands. Have a sharp knife or kitchen scissors ready.

Pull and cut the amount of dough you want. Then stretch the dough to create a gluten cloak. 

I did not even attempt to photograph myself shaping the loaf because this short video will be much more helpful.

Do note that your bread may look different from the bread in the video because she used 100% white flour and bread flour at that! Here is what my finished loaf looks like before I let it rest. You should really let it rest for at least 30 minutes, though 45 is better if you have the time. I have popped it in the oven after only 15-20 minutes in a pinch and it comes out fine, though it doesn't rise up quite as much in the oven.

Before baking, dust the top of your loaf with flour and then slash the top (I sometimes do an X design as well). I pop mine in the hot pan, put on the lid and cook for 15 minutes. Then I remove the lid and cook an additional 15 minutes. When it's finished, the crust should be brown and it should sound hollow when tapped. Remove to a cooling rack.

To store uneaten bread, turn the cut side down on a plate or cutting board. Sometimes I wrap it in a clean tea towel. I did try storing it in a plastic bag but the crust became soft right away and I found it was prone to mildew in the summer as we are in the humid South.

If you start making this often, as I did, you'll probably want to invest in a bowl with lid that is a good size for your fridge. I'd initially meant for this picture to show the holes drilled in the lid, but then I saw the cool reflection of my kitchen window in the lid and went that way instead. Just make sure the dough is mostly covered but has a way for any gases to escape.

I cannot believe how easy it is to make fresh bread for dinner! Basically, I make a ball, let it rest for 15 minutes, preheat the oven and my pan, pop it in when the oven beeps that it's preheated and cook for a half hour. It's simple to do while making other food -- or to have fresh bread for a leftover night. I love being able to take freshly baked bread when I visit a friend or neighbor.

Updated 4/8 to add picture of bread interior. This was the last loaf from this baking and had been in the fridge for about 6-7 days. The crumb is denser if I use a higher proportion of wheat flour, I have found. The little nooks/crannies make excellent buttered toast!

I hope you will try your own hand at making this simple and delicious bread! I encourage you to explore further, either via web search or here at the original Artisan Bread in Five web site. 

Bon appetite!

Chill Out

So if you've ever wondered "just how far south of Sunnybrook are you there, Becky?" I'll tell you I'm roughly 1,100 miles south of Maine (as the crow flies), smack dab in the middle of Tennessee, a beautiful and friendly place to live as long as you can appreciate a bit of heat and humidity. I grew up in West Tennessee (even more humid) in a house with one window a/c unit in the dining room that was only turned on for company. I've made my peace with humidity. 

Now yes, of course, I do use a/c, though I try to avoid it as much as possible because I hate being closed in where I'm insulated and can't even hear the rest of the world. Cool air in summer is a wonderful and amazing thing, but I wonder how much it accounts for kids playing outside less...for all of us being outside less, which means being less connected with the natural world. When I was a kid, it was often cooler outside once you hit the high 90s and I wouldn't be closed up in a muggy house for anything.

Cold-brewed green/mint teas

Whether I'm indoors or out, I like a little caffeine in the afternoons. In the winter, I enjoy coffee or tea, but in the summer I need something cold. I do really like iced coffee, but only really strong, freshly-brewed coffee and that's just too fussy for a quick afternoon beverage. 

Enter the cold-brewed green tea. Cold brewing renders a very smooth, drinkable tea and with no heating necessary, it's perfect for summer. Put tea bags in pitcher. Fill with water. Place in refrigerator overnight. Remove tea bags. Enjoy tea. I put five green tea bags and one mint tea bag in this batch and the result is smooth and intensely refreshing. 

Now, being indeed South of Sunnybrook, I have to agree with my friend Julie Ingrum, who knowingly asserts "there is only one way to properly sweeten tea and that is in the brewing process." I agree with her and when I make "Sweet Tea", even in summer I will brew it on the stove, but obviously you can't sweeten cold-brewed tea the same way. Now, I think the cold-brewed green tea is great straight and I drank it that way all last summer. But I'm hooked on something else now.

One day when my 4-year-old wasn't feeling well, we snuggled up on the couch and watched Laura Calder make this lovely citrus simple syrup on television. It's really easy to make and I add a bit to my green tea now. I can also make fresh, homemade lemonade on demand if I have some of this pretty simple syrup in my fridge and who doesn't love that? 

Citrus zest pretties up a sunny lemon simple syrup.

My sister adds thyme to her simple syrup and you can add other herbs (my friend Mary Alice adds mint and more in her delicious natural concoctions). I'm a lover of color myself, and I just really like the lovely bright yellow color this syrup gets from the lemon zest. It makes me happy to see it in my refrigerator. I can add herbage in my glass if I want some.

Try one or both of these this summer and let me know if you love this simple pleasure as much as I do.

Consider the dandelions

So there I sat one night, sucked totally into some mindless show in TV.  I was totally drawn into this amazingly lovely shot of a girl, about to blow the white, puffy dandelion..  A Perfect Childhood Moment.  Inhale and.....

And then....
Then it ended abruptly, with her father running out (ineffectively, I might add) to try to stop her from enjoying that moment, so that his perfect, green-blade grass would not be destroyed with.....(oh hold your horses)...flowers. You can see the slo-mo "glory shot" of him yelling "noooooooooo."

Well, I was bothered by the whole concept of that commercial.

My kids love dandelions. They love to pick them.  They love to blow them. And they love to eat them (well, that varies, but they do eat them more than I would imagine).  If you had a country gramma, you must know that you can eat them in a pinch.  I've never done it, but I like knowing that I can.  They are incredibly nutritious. So there!  But mostly, they like to pick them and/or blow them.  I've always loved this myself.  The dandelion has adapted itself really beautifully for things we like to do.

Dandelions are one of the first flowers to sprout in the spring and they are so very welcome.  They are heralds of growth. They pop out with the daffodils and provide In-Your-Face evidence that Our Earth keeps on keeping on.  Then, when you're distracted by the other bulbs or flowering trees other things you might want to plant, they can grow big and green and cover the ground if there's nothing else there.  But really those dandelions would rather to just chill out and let the clover have its day -- to hide down there and meditate under the fragrant flowers and soft leaves (and the honeybees)...and the occasional lawn mower..  The word "weed" is very subjective, truly.  It just means "a plant that grows well in a place I don't like it."

So think about letting the dandelions grow.