The real deal.
Stan posted this elsewhere here but it is kind of buried at the end of a thread, so I wanted to repeat his message here:
The Wall Street Journal Online picked up our recipe and credits the book ... you can find it at http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703794104575545843564259642-lMyQjAxMTAwMDEwMjExNDIyWj.html
Hi all, I haven't baked any bread for three months due to fitting a new kitchen in my spare time. Yesterday I baked a batch of No Knead bread to get back into it. Had fish fingers butties with the buns for tea; delicious!
I recently tried a recipe for an 80% hydration baguette. Again, since I don't have a scale, I converted to cups and teaspoons and I halved the recipe. The first time, I had waaaaaay too much water in it, but I thought I had halved it wrong and gotten confused between the water and the flour. The second time, I got this:
Hi,
I'm pretty new to breadmaking, funnily enough because I think I have a bit of a wheat intolerance. However, having researched how to make better bread I came upon the NY Times 'no knead bread' method and have been using this successfully over the last three weeks, making bread pretty much every day.
But I'd doing some things just because that is 'how it was done' on the video and would like to understand what is going on, so a couple of questions:
A quick proof hint for the microwave as seen in a magazine:
Yeast doughs that normally take an hour or more to rise at room temperature can be proofed in the microwave in about 15 minutes. Place the dough in a very large bowl and cover with plastic. Place an 8-ounce cup of water in the back of the microwave with the bowl of dough in the center, and set the power as low as possible (10 percent power). Heat for 3 minutes, then let the dough rest in the microwave for 3 minutes. Heat for 3 minutes longer, then let rest for 6 minutes. The dough will double in bulk.
For a few months, I was making my everyday ciabatta loaves with cheap supermarket canola oil (approximately 1/4 cup oil + 1-3/4 cup water to hydrate 4-1/2 cups of flour). Bread was OK but not great. Then I splurged on a bottle of organic olive oil from my health-food coop. Bread is a lot tastier.
D'oh! Of course the oil that has more sediment and a stronger flavor will assert itself in the bread.
I've been doing this recipe with added frig. time or tripple recipe. I've had great sucess. Practicing my scoring and shaping and getting better. So thanks to David for posting and thanks to Pat for creating such a great recipe. Patrick from Modesto
'
I've been baking at home for several months already and, recently (it started a month or two ago), I've had to reduce the amount of yeast in most of my recipes because the dough would ferment too rapidly. I've read somewhere (if I recall correctly, it was about King Arthur's bakery) that baking regularly can have this effect, since wild yeast becomes a lot more present in the air.
I'm not baking everyday, but I do bake a minimum of once a week and I'm wondering if anybody else had this happen to them...
thanks!
