And yes, bread can be made from flour and water. Knead some water with flour and leave it alone awhile, and it will start to rise. Passover breadmakers have to work fast because flour and water dough will rise on its own.

Stuff like oil and salt slow down and control rising.

I have a starter that I made from some Gold Medal White Flour without yeast. You don’t need yeast. You can make a starter with yeast if you want and just keep using that. Feed it with flour and/or sugars several hours before you make the main dough.

I have discovered high heat is the key to bread baking. I didn’t like the bread machine that I got rid of years ago. Now I bake my bread in a flat pizza oven with a slide out tray like some convenience stores use. My bread is ready in 10 to 15 minutes.

I usually bake bread flat, like pizza, but I can bake it as high as I can fit it in the pizza oven.

The little oven is also great for potatoes, which really need high heat to break them down and make them digestible.

We buy 12 x loaves at a time to get an extra discount and freeze most of it. Comes out to ~$2.20 to ~$2.50 / loaf for excellent organic bread. It is usually > $4 / loaf at the grocery store.

Mix ~10oz water, 1/2 tsp yeast, ~1 tbsp honey, and some flour (enough to make it paste like in texture) in a bowl. Set in fridge overnight.

Add another 1/2 tsp yeast, and start mixing in more flour until dough is appropriate texture, tacky but not sticky. Set on plate on counter for ~1 hour.

Lightly oil bottom and sides of bread pan. Knead dough for a minute or two. Roll dough into cylinder to fit in bread pan. Run hot water in another pan. Put dough on baking rack in oven, and hot water below dough. Close oven door and leave off. Check back in about 1 1/2 hours to see how far dough has risen. If it is near the top of the bread pan turn oven on to 350 for 27 minutes (I just leave it in while preheating, also leave water pan in). When timer goes off, take out of oven. You can leave it in the bread pan for a bit before you take it out, or you can take it out and wrap in foil right away.

I like this because it give me bread in a consistent cross section that I can make sandwiches out of all week for my girlfriend and me.

We buy steak meat in the local market (not super market, but a large enclosed warehouse type of building which sells all types of food stuff. Meat is displayed on slabs and we have found Mongolian beef to be the best we’ve ever eaten anywhere. We purchase 5kg of steak meat every two to three weeks and spend under $40. After we get home, we slice some of the steak strips for steak, some for stir fry, and the rest we grind to make chili, spaghetti, or lasagna.

I usually make a loaf of bread each week, and yogurt every two to three days. I will try adapting the recipes here for our bread maker. Our fresh yogurt (made in small baby-food sized jars) has taken the place of ice cream as dessert. Not only more healthy, but much tastier!

Following JD’s advice, we are now grocery shopping every other week. I love the savings in $$$ and in time.

Thanks everyone for sharing your advice and recipes!

I make double the amount in one mix.

1 lb wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon mix with the flour yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
half a teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of oil of your choice
11 fluid ounces warm water

Mix all this together thoroughly, DO NOT KNEAD, put it in a loaf tin and allow to rise.

Cook as any other bread.

DELISH!

Always love reading your blog.

Try to use bread maker, for example Panasonic SD 255. I own one over six months. Fast and simple to make, recipes included.

From Russia with love,
Pavel

I use Pyrex whenever I make no-knead breads (because I’m too lazy to get a new handle for my beautiful dutch oven). Some people recommend making an edge liner of tin foil to keep everything in, but I haven’t found that necessary. My Pyrex is from the 70′s, though; I’m not sure if newer Pyrex would work as well/be safe!

I shape my loaves on unsprayed parchment and dump them into the pre-heated pots without the parchment. When I tried it the CI way, baking the parchment to preserve the shape, I didn’t think the loaf browned as evenly. I personally prefer the rustic shape with an evenly browned crust.

As for the baking containers, I use an 8-quart stainless steel stew pot with a heavy bottom and an iron lid (the glass lid the pot came with is only rated to 450 and I bake at 475). If I make two loaves at once, I use a regular cast-iron (not enameled) dutch oven for the second loaf and it works well, too. I pre-heat both pot and lid but separately, not with the lid covering the pot.

I use 10 oz bread flour, 5 oz whole wheat, 12 oz water (slightly warmed in microwave to compensate for our cold house, about 58-60 in winter) 7 grams salt and 1 gram yeast. Combine, cover with plastic wrap and leave overnight. If I don’t have time to bake it when it seems ready, I just punch it down and bake a few hours later. The texture is not quite as good (big holes) but still very delicious. 30 minutes at 475 with lid, 20 minutes same temp without lid.

Suggestions for JD:

For the flour – use 2 cups bread flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, and 3 tablespoons of soy flour. This will create a better and deeper flavor, while giving you what is essentially whole wheat bread (whole wheat flour cannot be used alone as it incapable of developing sufficient gluten to rise. Any baker who tells you that they only use whole wheat flour in their bread is lying, unless they server dense, flat bread).

You can also add a quarter of a crushed vitamin C tablet to reinforce gluten formation. This will give your bread better structure.

If you ever decide you want to look at the cooking of bread more closely, I suggest you check Shirley Corriher’s Cookwise out of the library and read the first section, which is about bread. She explains the science behind baking bread.

With recipes like this, I find it’s a good idea to follow the recipe exactly the first time, just to see what it’s supposed to be like, before you try experimenting or substituting ingredients. When I follow this recipe exactly, using nothing but good bread flour, the result is so extraordinary that the only variation I’ve ever done is to use 25 percent to 30 percent whole wheat. Whenever we serve this bread to guests they always ask us what bakery we got it from; it’s as good or better than any of the bread I’ve eaten from the best bakeries where I live (Montreal) or in France.

To answer Charlotte’s questions above, preheating the dutch oven is crucial because you want it to be piping hot when you put the dough inside and cover the lid. That creates the browning and steaming necessary to produce the amazing crust on this bread. You can’t use a bread pan and get the same results — you need a covered container with room for the steam to develop.

Do you spray the dough on top or just the parchment paper?

Why do you start with 500 temperature then lower to 425? I have a convection oven which theoretically has a constant temperature. Can I just set it to 425? I don’t want to heat up the house too much. Also, why do you have to pre-heat 30 min. in advance? Does it make a difference or you just meant enough time to reach the temperature?

Thanks,
Charlotte

I never said I did it for health reasons. :n)

Also: I love the variety in your posts!

Also easy is pizza dough: Sprinkle 1 tbsp (1 pkg) dry yeast in 1 cup warm water mixed with 1 tbsp honey. After 10 minutes, stir in 2 tbsp olive oil & 1 tsp salt; add 1 c all-purpose or bread unbleached flour & mix thoroughly. Mix in another cup of flour (you’ll likely start having to use your hands for this) & add additional flour until dough no longer sticks to your hands. Put in a bowl greased with olive oil & let rise for an hour. Punch down & knead a few turns, divide & shape into pizzas (2 x 12 inch or 1 cookie pan) let sit for 15 minutes, add thin layer of tomato sauce & favourite toppings-bake at 450F on top rack for 20 minutes or until browned on bottom You can also put dough bowl in the fridge if making in the morning for dinner: my daughter as first home after school would take it out to warm up & when I got home we’d roll out and prepare as above.

If you don’t have a dutch oven and don’t want to invest big money in a real Le Creuset, the stoneware insert from your crock pot works just as well. (If you don’t have a crock pot, they only cost $15 at the grocery store.) Mine has a glass lid with a plastic handle that I don’t trust at oven temperatures, so I use another lid that fits well enough to keep the steam in.

If you have a bread machine, you can use it to knead and rise dough and then, after the dough has risen, take the stuff out, shape it as desired, and bake it in the oven. For some reason oven-baked seems to taste ten times better than bread-machine baked.

Costco yeast seems to be livelier than the stuff that comes in packets. As Angie points out, you may not need 3 tsp (1 Tbsp) to get the desired results. You can store yeast in the freezer with great success; I keep a small jar of it in the refrigerator and the big stash in the freezer.

I use only 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon of the regular Costco yeast (depends on the recipe; 1/2 t for our regular bread) and always have great results. I do find that whenever I try a new recipe it might take me two or three attempts to get it just right. However, I live at 3500 feet above sea level, so I’m assuming that I need to modify these recipes a bit to take the elevation into account.