by Caroline
So, remember how I told you about my new pet? The sourdough pet that I hoped would be the source of much delicious bread?
Well.
It was a little finicky.
I should have known when I set the cookbook down and waded into the virtual sea of blogs offering advice on how to feed and care for this particular style of homegrown sourdough pet. I tended mine for a couple weeks but it never turned into anything able to leaven bread and so I did, as I threatened I might, pour it down the drain.
And then I remembered another bread technique that had swept the internets in the last couple years and made a bestselling author of its creator: Jim Lahy’s Sullivan Street bakery no-knead bread, popularized by the fabulous Mark Bittman. I had looked at this recipe so many times since it was first published but rejected it for two reasons: I didn’t have the required 6-8 quart pan; I like to knead.
Well, duh.
I have two 3-quart pans.
And I figured I could knead the bread a little bit if I wanted to.
So I made it, and it’s wonderful.
I really (uncharacteristically) followed the recipe, exactly as written. I let it rise about 12 hours the first time I made it, more like 18 the second time, and that timing works well: mix up the dough before bedtime one night, and you’ll have fresh warm bread for dinner the next day. Your interaction with the dough is minimal — maybe 30 minutes total, depending on whether you knead it at all, but really, the dough is so soft it’s pretty impossible to knead, and the resulting bread is fabulous: crisp crust, tender crumb.





Not only does this recipe easily produce a delicious loaf (or two) of bread, but it gives you something you can’t get from a bakery: a house smelling of freshly baked bread. But if the long process puts you off, here’s another no-knead recipe that comes together much more quickly. It’s not a sourdough, but it’s a very tasty sandwich bread. Or want to avoid kneading and rising? Try a soda bread; Ben devised a recipe a few years back that works pretty well, too. So what are you waiting for? Make some bread this weekend!
Libby
can it be that you will finally be converted to no-knead bread? After all these years?
I, on the other hand, am actually making some bread that requires (well, minimal) kneading, as a result of the fabulous mixer. So thanks for that! (And, if you ever need pizza dough or flat bread in a huge hurry, try this:http://arabicbites.blogspot.com/2007/12/10-minutes-dough-or-as-i-call-it-all.html
with this technique:
http://arabicbites.blogspot.com/2008/02/quick-10-minutes-dough-flat-bread.html
Learning To Eat » Archivio » Nigella’s Lemon Linguine
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