Check out this short video for a brief overview on making no-knead bread.
As you can see, it’s really easy! Mix the ingredients and let them hang out overnight. Whenever you’re ready, pre-heat the dutch oven or cloche, load the bread, and bake away.
No-Knead Artisan Bread at Home
No-knead bread is a good way to make bread. It gives you a nice crust, decent flavor, and a good looking end product! This will get you on your way to artisan breads at home with minimal fuss.
Fall is here and one of my favorite end-of-summer/start-of-fall fruits is the prune plum. I was always a plum fan but what really makes me love them is the fun memories they bring back. One day while visiting family in Seattle’s Madison Park neighborhood I noticed how there were plum trees everywhere! My daughter was 3 at the time and we went out for an evening stroll when all of the sudden, a plum fell right on her head! Oh how we laughed at that! She ate that plum and we picked a few more along our route to be sure. We bonded over plums and I guess I’ve always loved them even more since that day.
Now that season is here again and I bought a huge quantity at our local fruit farm. Try as we might to eat them all, we weren’t able to. We even gave a third to our neighbors and still had some left over after 2 weeks! So, instead of baking a pie (which I really wanted to do!) I decided to make some yeasted water with the plums to try to make bread. I also harvested several seeds and will try to plant plum trees in our yard. If anyone has any insight on planting plum trees from seeds, connect with me via Facebook!
If you’ve never heard of yeasted water, it’s kind of magical. You get a mason jar, fill it with about 2/3 water, and add your fruit of choice to the water. I just pitted about 3 plums and lightly smooshed them in the jar. I then put the lid on tightly and put the jar in a cool darkish place for a week.
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Checking on it every few days I could see the magic start to happen. Bubbles were forming and I took the sniff test each time to make note of the sweet smell and to hear the bubbles fizz. After a week’s time the plums had all floated to the surface and the water had gone from clear to “plum” color – a beautiful dark rose/light purple hue. It also smelled very sweet. I almost took a swig to taste it but decided to save every drop for a double batch of bread.
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So, “how do you use yeast water to make bread?” you may ask. It’s really quite simple. Instead of adding any yeast, you just use the water. Does it work? You betcha! I got my inspiration from this post about a year ago and tried it, and have used this method a few times since. The tricky part is figuring out how much water to use in order to replace your yeast. Since I didn’t want it to fail I used all of the water and cheated by spiking the bread with just 1 gram of yeast. Turns out I really didn’t need this extra yeast as the dough was super active after a few hours on the bench.
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Process
One of the things I want to do on this site is to share with you the (many) mistakes that I make as a home baker. Not all breads are beautiful, not all loaves are perfect. For one reason or another, I often mess up and want to use this space to share with you pitfalls you will likely face when baking in your own kitchen.
When I was first introduced to semolina bread, I was in awe. I usually thought of semolina in terms of pasta but after trying it in bread form, I was hooked. The bread had a light golden color and a soft, fine crumb that craved to be toasted and buttered. Whenever I get my hands on semolina flour I always look forward to making a loaf that stands up to that vision.
This past week I went to a local grain store and purchased a few bags of different flours. Some bread flour, some wheat flour, and gladly some semolina flour. I was a little dismayed when the vendor wasn’t sure where the flours came from (I was hoping for some local flour milled in Pennsylvania) but nevertheless, home I went.
I fed my sourdough starter and adjusted a recipe from Jeffrey Hamelman’s “Bread” book for a semolina sourdough loaf. The recipe yields two loaves and is quite easy to make. If this is your first time using semolina, you’ll be surprised by how it transforms from granular flour to soft dough.
Homemade bread, fresh out of the oven, is one of the easiest ways to get the family together. The smell alone is intoxicating. Add a little bit of butter to the mix and you are ready to enjoy one of the best rewards that baking has to offer. Soft crumb, nice crust, great chew…need I say more?
This is the first part of my bread baking tutorial. We’ll start with this no fail homemade bread recipe. This bread is surprisingly easy to make and is a great recipe to master as you can use it with little or no modifications and make amazing pizza dough, pretzels, bagels, and more. It is one of my favorite homemade breads to make and the kids always ask me to make more. This recipe is really easy to pull off and make, but don’t be fooled, the homemade bread that it makes is a crowd pleaser. Whether you are a new baker or an experienced bread maker, this bread formula is no fail. The hardest part about the whole thing is waiting for it to cool you remove it from the oven before eating!
This bread is a great bread to make if this is your first time baking. The ingredients are very basic and the process is quite straightforward. The only piece of machinery that I use is a stand mixer but you can also use a food processor (really, try it!) or your hands. For your very first time making homemade bread, I would recommend using your hands and big bowl so you get to know what the dough feels like at different stages, but if you don’t want to deal with dirty hands then the mixer or processor will do just fine.
