Sunday, October 31, 2010

Magic Bread

I'm late to jump on the bandwagon, but the no-knead bread experiment led to finding a 2006 YouTube video with Mark Bittman of the New York Times, watching baker Jim Lahey bake beautiful no-knead bread in a cast iron dutch oven. A follow-up video details minor improvements. Here I've substituted one cup of whole wheat flour for white, but otherwise followed the improved version. All it contains is flour, salt, yeast, water and a few drops of vinegar. Wow. Incredibly easy, and it may just be the best yeasted whole wheat bread I've ever made.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Different Kind of Pizza

My friend Jeri introduced me to a book, Artisan Breads in Five Minutes a Day. The very wet yeasted dough isn't kneaded, and it can be stored in the refrigerator for over a week to be shaped and baked as needed. Yesterday, I used the last of the master dough recipe for pizza, too impatient to make their olive oil pizza dough variation. It will be fun to continue experimenting, but a first attempt provided a wildly puffy result.