Yesterday I mentioned that I baked some bread. The comments tell me people actually read this thing, which not only makes me feel warm and fuzzy, but also compels me to add a few extra notes from my adventure with the No Knead Bread. Thank you, readers. You muse me.
* Lacking a cast iron pot, I baked mine in a stainless steel pot with no ill effects.
* I replaced 1/3 of the white bread flour with whole wheat bread flour which seemed to work well, but may have contributed to a somewhat flatter than expected loaf.
* The recipe calls for folding the dough in thirds after its first rise. In my (absent) mind, I interpreted “folding in thirds” as “folding in half three times”. I only realised later that I was supposed to fold the dough like a business letter. Regardless, nothing terrible happened, so maybe it’s no big deal how you fold it, just as long as you do?
* Speaking of folding dough, any step that involved dough handling was pretty messy. The doughball is more of a doughblob. And like any good blob, it wanted to ooze between my fingers everytime I picked it up, giving me that stomach churning feeling that I’d done something wrong. It wasn’t soupy or wet or anything, just oozy. The video demonstrates this pretty well, and it’s to be expected. Stress: be gone!
* I used cornmeal for the dusting, but any kind of flour or “meal” (i.e. wheat bran) should do the trick.
* While compulsively reading about this recipe on other blogs on the internets, I stumbled across “Real Baking with Rose”. Her style’s a little too Home & Garden for my tastes (she actually starts one of her paragraphs with “It began with a veal shank from my butcher Pino”. I mean, what real human being has a butcher and cooks with veal shanks?). Rose strikes me as the kind of person who has to have every kitchen gadget known to man, and would look down upon any cook who doesn’t have a well seasoned cast iron skillet. She brings out the misogynist in me, and yet, she has a recipe for 100% whole wheat walnut bread that I’d like to try. Is this a love-hate relationship or what?
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Thats looks so good I’m going to have to try it!
Let me know how it goes. I’m going to give it another run this weekend, maybe trying it in a smaller pot so I got a rounder loaf? Ooh, and maybe adding some seeds…