Bring on the Night

I really like cooking and baking. It lets me relax and forget everything else (which is needed when you have kids, trust me). I rarely have time to indulge in cooking up new dishes, so I often end up making the usual stuff with a twist.

Normally the bread-baking business is C’s area and she does that well, so I haven’t entered that door for a while.

Recently though, I found a new recipe for bread that turned out great. It’s a basic recipe for Italian style bread. Its pretty simple with few ingredients. It can be varied with different flour types and whatever you like in your bread. The only tricky part about it is timing, as the dough needs to be rested for 12-18 hours, turned in flour, then 2 hours more of rest. It’s not always fitting into my schedule with kids, work and all.

Still I somehow managed to make 5 or 6 of them the last 4 days.

Here’s a few pictures (shot with mobile phone, yeah I know, sorry):
    
My first attempt. Plain bread, with no funny business. Just following the basic recipe.

Next time, I mixed it up a bit. The one on the left is with walnuts, and the other is with 25% rye and pumpkin seeds. Both turned out well in each respect.

It’s crusty and chewy just the right way. Even C likes it, though its a bit too hard for her taste. But then again, everything cant be steamed…..

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Update – recipe added below

Here’s the recipe:

First thing: You need a pot with lid or similar that can go into the oven. If you haven’t got that, don’t bother. I used a glass dish with a lid as you can see in the background on one of the pictures above. That worked well, but it’s anyone’s guess what will work for you.

Ingredients:

• 1 pea size yeast (yes, that’s enough really!)
• 400gr wheat flour
• 300gr cold water
• 8gr salt

That’s it basically. The tricky part is timing as the dough needs time to rise.

Instructions:

1. Dissolve the yeast in the water.
2. Add salt and flour and mix it about until all flour is wet (no kneading necessary).
3. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rest for 12-18 hours in room temperature (18 is best).
4. Take the dough out of the bowl and turn it gently in flour so all sides are covered.
5. Put it back into a new bowl and let it rest for 2 more hours.
6. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees Celsius and put the empty pot (or what you have that can be used) into the oven for 30mins.
7. Take the pot out, drop the dough into the heated pot and put it back into the oven with the lid on.
8. Leave it for 30 minutes, take off the lid and turn the warm down to 230 degrees. Let it bake for 15 minutes more.
9. Take it out, turn the bread out of the pot and let it cool off on a rack (for about 2 hours) and you’re done!

All in all it’s about planning ahead and you need to know in advance that you need the bread. It can be done in about 15½ or 23½ hours depending on how long you let it rest. No matter what, that’s a lot waiting if you’re hungry. So if that’s the case, you may need to go to the bakery instead.

As with all recipes this may seem like a lot to remember, but it’s really easy when you’ve done it once. I have a miserable memory, but got it first time and even wrote these instructions from memory.

If you want, you can switch ¼ of the flour with another type (rye, durum or whatever you like) to make the bread taste different. I also tried putting walnuts and a pumpkin seed into it and it works well too.

Good luck and hail Jim Lahey!

Update II: Heads up – Time issues forced me to let the dough rest for more the 2 hours (just before baking it), and that was no success. It didn’t rise as much as as the other bread that I made the day before (made double portion, so it was the same dough). Bad for the bread, but good for the learning process.

Tags: bread, cooking, recipe