The process of baking bread is like an homage to our past: One
of our oldest foods is also one of the most satisfying to create
from scratch. The smell of the classic heart-warmer can no doubt
warm spirits on even the chilliest of days. As fall settles in,
here are some tasty recipes for those with bread machines or sturdy
palms: The no knead recipe requires neither.
This is a quick and easy yeast bread designed to work with
quick-rise yeast, regular active dry yeast works too. Stir together
in a large bowl or the bowl of a heavy-duty mixer:
Mix by hand or on low speed for 1 minute. Add ? cup at a time
until the dough is moist but not sticky:
1 to 1? cups bread flour
Knead for about 10 minutes by hand or with the dough hook on low
to medium speed, until the dough is smooth and elastic. Transfer
the dough to an oiled bowl and turn it over to coat with oil. Cover
the bowl loosely with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place (75
to 85 degrees) until doubled in bulk, 40 to 45 minutes. Grease a
9-by-5 inch loaf pan. Punch down the dough, form it into a loaf,
and place seam side down in the pan. Oil the surface and cover
loosely with a clean cloth. Let rise in a warm place until doubled
in bulk, 20 to 45 minutes. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Bake
the loaf for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake
about 30 minutes more. Bake until the crust is golden brown. Remove
the loaf from the pan to a rack and let cool completely.
Yields: One 9-by-5-inch loaf
For Bread Machines: Hearty Winter Bread
From
CooksRecipes.com.
7/8 cup water
2 tbsp. butter or margarine
1 large egg
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup cornmeal
2? cup white bread flour
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
2? tsp. active dry yeast
Add ingredients in the order given by the manufacturer of your
bread machine.
Select the sweet or basic setting and desired crust color setting;
press start.
Makes a 2 pound loaf.
Onion Beer Bread
For onion lovers! This scrumptious recipe from The Flavorful
Seasons Cookbook is easy for anyone.
3 cups self-rising flour
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
10 ounces room-temperature light beer
2 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup onion, minced
Nonstick cooking spray
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all ingredients. Pour into
a lightly sprayed 9-inch loaf pan and bake for about 50 minutes, or
until a toothpick comes out clean.
For those without a bread machine or a strong set of hands,
there is another option: don't knead the dough at all. That's
right; it's possible to bake bread without any palm work
whatsoever. The
New
York Times posted the following recipe, which actually yielded
an edible loaf of bread for this novice baker. Check out the
December 2007/January 2008 issue of
Mother Earth News for
much more on this No Knead bread technique. I recently tried this
technique for myself and have included my tips and mishaps in
bold.
No Knead Bread
Time: About 1? hours plus
14 to 20 hours' rising
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
1/4 tsp. instant yeast
1? tsp. salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed for dusting (At my
mother's suggestion, I ditched both and just used extra
flour.)
1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups
water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky.
(The dough will not just be sticky, it will be incredibly
gummy.) Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at
least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature,
about 70 degrees. (I let my dough rise for a full 18 hours
resting on and/or close to a heating pad set on low, to combat the
chilly air that had moved in the weekend I chose for my
adventure.)
2. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle
it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or
twice. (I could not, and did not, 'fold' the dough. It was
so sticky that the best I could do was attempt to turn it over.
Luckily, my 'loaf' still rose as it should have.) Cover
loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.
3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work
surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a
ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour,
wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust
with more flour. (Again, I basically failed at this step.
Even though I avoided terry cloth, the towel I choose was still
porous enough that my dough completely cemented itself into it's
grooves, and I could not keep my hands coated with enough flour to
shape the dough into anything, as it was clinging to my
fingers.) Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for
about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in
size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
(Luckily, my dough still did this, though it was a huge
amorphous blob, not a neat ball with a seam.)
4. At least a half an hour before dough is ready, heat oven to
450 degrees. Put a 6-to-8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron,
enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready,
carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and
turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess,
but that is OK ('Look like a mess' equaled a sticky,
no-seamed blob of dough and way too much extra flour hanging out in
the Pyrex dish I used.) Shake pan once or twice if dough
is unevenly distributed. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then
remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is
beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.
Yield: One 1?-pound loaf.
(Incredibly, despite all inconsistencies between my loaf
and the one described in the recipe, I still created a
sweet-smelling, slightly chewy but honestly and notably delicious
loaf of bread with crispy, golden crust. I just had to dust an
embarrassing amount of flour off of it before I sliced it
up.)
You'll also want to check out
Easy, No Knead Crusty Bread in the December 2007/January 2008
issue of Mother Earth News. There's even a
video demonstration of the technique and an explanation of
how it works. Happy baking!
I would like to see a little more fiber involved. These recipes are mostly white flour. I make a delicious loaf of whole wheat and white whole wheat bread (whole wheat of a lighter color).One reason I started making bread was to get a healthier loaf. I enjoy kneading it, but there may be a way to do it without kneading.Thank you, Susan
Did the writer try Suzanne Dunaway's book "No Need To Knead"? It's wonderful. There is a focaccia recipe that is so easy & good - mix sticky dough - rest 60-90 mins - dump and stretch onto a baking sheet - voila! Looking forard to the article in M.E.News.
Wow! These "No-Knead" recipes sounds like going to a lot of bother to avoid a little bother!I do have one no-knead recipe that works well, from an Old Betty Crocker cookbook, cira. 1961, made with an electric mixer (heavy-duty NOT required). It's called "Streamlined White Bread" and can be adapted with correct proportioning, to use whole wheat flour. The recipe can be found at my blog, beckworld.net. Still, that bread has a slightly less fine texture, in my opinion,than kneaded bread.Maybe I'm kind of simple-minded, but for me, it's a lot easier to just use a kneaded bread recipe. Thank God for heavy-duty mixers! :)
Thank you Jaime for your great comments and sense of adventure!This recipe reminds me of one I used to make in Austraila in the 1990's, which I think I got from Grass Roots magazine. The sticky mess produced at the end of the first rise was unbelievable as something that would produce a good loaf of bread, and yet somehow it did! I used wholewheat flour, and also changed things a bit at the end of the first rise, by adding a cup or two of presoaked mixed grains and seeds like buckwheat, oats, barley, rye, linseed, sunflower seeds. I then turned the mess onto a well floured work surface, sprinkled flour over the top, and worked the flour in with my hands until the mix wasn't so sticky anymore. It wasn't really kneading, just turning the bread in on itself as I added more flour, this stage took a few minutes only. It surely was messy though, as my hands ended up coated with a lot of the dough even if I floured then really well first. Fun too though- like playdough for grown-ups! I then shaped the dough into two loaves, and put then into bread tins for the second rise. This recipe produced a lovely moist heavy bread, like proper rye bread, which stayed fresh for a week. I also used the same recipe to make bagels. Time to get baking again I think!
I just wanted to comment on the writer's personal notes on the "No Knead" recipe. It was written very well and gave me a good chuckle!!Thank you!
I can't believe that my favorite magazine is so uninlightened as to continue to publish recipes with refined white flour. For those of you also uninlightened, white flour (also known as enriched flour, all purpose flour, bread flour, unbleached flour or any name other than 100% whole grain) has most of the nutrients removed and is one of the contributors to the obesity epidemic in the United States as well as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.