Weekly Cooking (and related issues) Thread

[Jamestown1630]

I've had several requests to do a thread on bread baking. I've hesitated, because it's been quite a while since I baked bread; I'm by no means expert at it; and I don't like to post recipes that I haven't tried and proven recently. But, due to popular demand, here we go!

My first experience with baking bread was back in the 1970s when so many of us young folks were bitten by the 'back-to-nature' bug. I was also experimenting with various levels of vegetarianism, and was very interested in cooking with whole grains.

The first bread I made was a completely whole wheat loaf, from the original 'Laurel's Kitchen' cookbook. At the time, I didn't have a KitchenAid, and did everything by hand. It was very hard kneading this dense dough for the required amount of time, but it turned out pretty well for a rank beginner's attempt. (I'm not sure if making this with a KitchenAid would be a very kind thing to do to the machine's motor, so I would suggest only using the mixer up to a point.)

I found a link to the recipe I used on a forum, and here it is:

http://cathe.com/forum/threads/laurels-kitchen-whole-wheat-bread-recipe.230551/

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Some years ago, a New York Times article on 'No Knead Bread' made quite a splash, and I tried it. The recipe requires a Dutch oven, and we had just bought a new Lodge enameled one (the poor man's Le Creuset ;-).

Well, I proceeded to almost destroy the beautiful new Dutch oven, by baking this bread in it at the recommended temps. I never tried it again, but recently I found a simple solution to the problem of burning your Dutch oven, which also makes transferring this very wet, sticky dough much easier: use parchment!

Here is the original recipe:

http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread

And here is YouTuber Dale Calder, showing how he does a sourdough no-knead version using parchment. It's 12 minutes, but he shows some good handling techniques - and his Dutch oven is pristine, compared with what mine looks like now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmADkUSRatY

-JT

[Jamestown1630]

Let us know how it goes.

-JT

[kalee]

That looks delicious!

[Liz]

Cant make it to the Caribbean?
Make Bahama Breeze's sumptuous dessert.

CHOCOLATE ISLAND

Just unmold your richest chocolate mousse recipe
on a fudge brownie circle floating in a pool of
marbled chocolate sauce and vanilla bean anglaise.

(Or use melted rich vanilla ice cream for crème
anglaise as food icon James Beard once did).

Add shaved toasted almonds, dollop of whipt cream.

[kalee]

That looks good too!

[newb2012]

This is too late for this update but dint get enough time to do all I wanted to, in the kitchen. However I tried baking all whole wheat bread with a few different recipes in vain. My bread was rock hard each time :-(
The ones with part bread flour and part white wheat turned out pretty good though.
Hope you are enjoying your culinary creations :-)