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Back in university I took a creative writing course where I wrote a series of short stories about a fictional medieval village. In our first class, we had to read our first story. Mine began with the heroine Thayleen (shortened from phenolphthalein, an acid-base indicator; I was also in a chemistry class that term) walking through the town market. A baker called out, “Come try my bread! Best bread on the island!” But I got tongue-tied and read it as “Breast bed on the island.”
Yeah. I was cool back then. Let’s fast-forward about 15 years because I’ve found what may in fact be the best bread ever.
Recently I came across an article on the Macleans website, reviewing a new book called My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method, by Jim Lahey. The author, a professional baker, came up with a way to make no-fail bread at home with almost no effort. Well let me tell you, I’m a big supporter of no-fail and no-effort! So I Googled to find a recipe from the book and I found one here (scroll to the bottom for the print-friendly link).
The big secret to this bread is to bake it in a large oven-proof pot like a dutch oven. Well, I didn’t have one so I went out and bought one, along with bread flour and yeast. That was the most effort I had to put into this recipe.
The ingredients are simple: flour, yeast, water, and salt. Mix them for 30 seconds, cover, and let it sit for 12-18 hours.
After the sitting time is over (I waited 15 hours), turn the sticky dough out onto a floured surface, shape it into a ball, put it onto a floured dishtowel, and fold the towel over it. (Tip: put a lot of flour on the dishtowel.)
Leave it for another 1-2 hours. Preheat the oven and the pot, then carefully drop the dough into the pot, cover it, and bake for 30 min. Remove the lid, and bake for another 15 mins or so. Take the pot out of the oven and turn the loaf out onto a cooling rack. It will come right out without sticking, and it will smell amazing!
Now wait for 1 hour for it to cool down. This step is painful, let me tell you. :) But Jim Lahey says it’s important and if Jim Lahey says it’s important, then you should do it. And this is your reward:
And here’s mine with butter, honey, and saskatoon jam:
And the taste is… Amazing! Yum! It’s quite different from store-bought bread but that’s a good thing. The outside is crispy and the inside is chewy and semi-dense with lots of air bubbles. It has a fairly mild flavour that should go well with most toppings.I’m interested to try this technique again, maybe with whole-wheat flour or some herbs or other ingredients added. I figure my total time spent in the kitchen was maybe 15 minutes over the course of 2 days, and I got a gorgeous loaf of bread out of it. My Bread is definitely on my Christmas wish list!
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P.S. iPhone users, I found a new foodie app to recommend. It’s called Harvest and costs $2.99. It contains info about how to select and store 64 types of produce, what’s in season when, pesticide levels used to grow them, etc. It’s super easy to use and a great little gadget to have handy at the grocery store.
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Thanks FSS. Another great blog post. As a carb lover I am all over this recipe :)
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