Pass The Sushi!

There are a few things in the culi­nary world that intim­i­date me for no log­i­cal rea­son. Bread would have to be in the top 5 if I were to actu­ally sit down and write that list. I don’t know why. I have done a bil­lion cake like breads, but to me, they don’t count. I’m talk­ing yeast and dough and kneading.

How­ever, I was deter­mined to over­come this silly fear by tak­ing on my first bread dough with a no knead ver­sion (pretty much can’t screw that up right). So after googling and tastespot­ting - then not read­ing the recipe through, this is what I came up with.

No Knead Arti­san Bread adapted from Arti­san Bread in Five Min­utes a Day

makes four 1 pound loaves.

3 cups luke­warm water
1–1/2 table­spoons gran­u­lated fast act­ing yeast (2 pack­ets)
1–1/2 table­spoons kosher or other coarse salt
6–1/2 cups unsifted, unbleached all pur­pose white flour

1.  Add yeast and salt to the water in a 5 quart bowl or a plas­tic con­tainer with a lid.

2.  Mix in the flour - knead­ing is unnec­es­sary.  Add all of the flour at once, mea­sur­ing the flour by scoop­ing it and lev­el­ing it off with a knife.  Mix with a wooden spoon — do not knead.  You’re fin­ished when every­thing is uni­formly moist, with­out dry patches.  (it said wooden spoon, but I just used my hands as my BF doesn’t have wooden spoon — that was prob­a­bly a bad choice as it was crazy messy >.< but who cares)

3.  Allow to rise. Cover with a lid (not air­tight — I used a large bowl and cling wrap — but not sealed).  Refrig­er­ate  overnight (they say you can use it after 2 hours of ris­ing, but the dough is bet­ter to work with over night — and will taste bet­ter as time passes).

4. Shape your loaf.  On a upside down bak­ing sheet, sprin­kle a lit­tle flower. Sprin­kle the sur­face of your dough in the con­tainer with flour.  Pull up and cut off about a 1-pound piece of dough.  With flour dusted hands, stretch the sur­face of the dough around to the bot­tom on all four sides, rotat­ing the ball as you go.

5. Let the loaf rise / Pre­heat your oven. Let the dough rise about 40 min­utes (it doesn’t look like much has changed). Pre­heat your oven and bak­ing stone to 450 for the last 20 min­utes. Place a rimmed bak­ing pan on the rack under your stone.

6. Dust the loaf with a lit­tle flour and slash the top with a knife. (haha, I for­got this step — it wasn’t the end of the world).

7. Bak­ing. Quickly trans­fer your dough ball to the stone in the over and poor water into the rimmed pan under it. The water in the pan cre­ates a steam that gives the bread the crusty outer layer.

8. Cool all the way through

9. Enjoy!

10. Store the extra dough. You can store the extra dough in the same not air tight bowl it is in for up to 14 days. Once again, they say it gets bet­ter the with time.

My other culi­nary accom­plish­ment this week was a nice baked chicken — using the best of both an Anna Bar­rel and Ina Garten’s sim­ple baked chicken recipes.

And on that note, I have just pot­ted some rose­mary, laven­der, and pars­ley (and by I, I mean, my BFF’s hubby did all the work — thank you so much Arthur!). Hope­fully they live long enough to be used as herbs for some­thing in the future. I would love to see them grow and actu­ally get all down and dirty in the yard plant­ing all kinds of beau­ti­ful things just to spruce up the place.