I've been getting back in touch with my inner baker.
I learned to bake bread from my mom when I was 7. I remember standing on a step stool at the kitchen counter, a hand towel tied around my waist in lieu of an apron, learning the right hand motions in punching down dough.. kneading dough...looking for just the right texture before letting dough rise. I grew up appreciating the smell of bread baking in the house; the joy of eating a warm slice dripping with honey outside on the front lawn.
Baking bread seemed to be an all day affair.... with the finished product coming out of the oven in late afternoon if we started early in the morning. Adjustments were made if the day was rainy, or humid or hot; as all of these things affected The Dough. Since those days of early apprenticeship under my mother's gaze, until the late adult hood, I had baked bread in just about every conceivable fashion: in coffee cans, in flower pots ( new ones, of course, but flower pots just the same), in dutch ovens over campfires, I even got to bake bread in a kiva one time in the gold country.
So when I stumbled upon No Knead bread recipes the first time...oh...last year sometime...I kinda turned up my nose and moved along. A dough that you didn't knead just didn't seem like real bread. It's kinda like those people ( you KNOW who you are ) that make Ambrosia out of Cool Whip and fruit cocktail. I'm sorry, but.......uh ....NO. No knead ? No Good..... Move along...nothing to see here.
Then last year I had a remarkable lunch that included a warm bread salad. And I've been wanting to re-produce that bread salad ever since... but it required a "rustic" bread. Now to be fair; my local Safeway bakery actually makes some wonderful loaves of bready goodness...but I wanted something a little more hands on....
But at the same time.... I didn't want the bread baking to be an all day thing. ( And I'm sorry, you lovers of bread machines out there; but the bread they produce just doesn't do it for me.... )
Enter again; the No Knead bread recipe phenom. Ok ...Ok.... so I decide to give it a try. And I hate to admit this...but I'm sorta..........yeah...........hooked.
Hard to believe that a soup of dough that is slopped together in a bucket and left to chill in the fridge till you are ready to mess with it can produce on demand such toothsome happiness as the roll above. The crust is properly crunchy without causing fear of dental work; the texture exactly spot on and nice enough to stand up to spreads, the taste....the taste is simply amazing...
No..it is not the soft ,white-as-angel-wings bread that I learned to make at my mother's kitchen counter....and no, this particular version is not made from sprouted grains or husks of anything ...it's plain ole all purpose flour, yeast, kosher salt, and water.... and..... wonderful.
This particular roll ? I decided I wanted some fresh bread for a turkey sandwich today....in an hour; I went from thought to finished product and have been munching said sandwich as I typed this today.
Interested you say ? Do a search on No Knead Bread recipes; or take the expressway to your nearest bookstore and pick up a copy of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.
And smile when you walk pass by the bread aisle in your market......
