The No-knead Bread Week-end

I feel like I spent the whole week-end making no-knead bread. Of course, it’s not like I’m wiped out or anything. After all, it is no-knead.

In a previous post I wrote about how I had been baking the no-knead bread wrong, which had lead to a great coconut-white chocolate bread discovery. Still, baking it the right way, in a heated pot, in a 450 F oven, makes all the difference. It's a wonderfully rustic loaf, with a substantial crust and a moist, chewy interior. Very ploughman lunch-ish.

This is my latest effort at the coconut, white chocolate bread. Only I had run out of white chocolate chips, and substituted butterscotch instead. Yeah. Not a winner. It was okay, and it is possible that I have been eating so much bread lately that I am "breaded-out" and just couldn't appreciate it as much, but it didn't taste right. The butterscotch chips aren't a subtle enough flavor to go with the coconut. The flavors aren't supposed to jump out and hit you in the face. It's supposed to be gently sweet, chewy, with vague creamy bits of milky white chocolate. Also, the butterscotch chips melted weirdly and left brown streaks in the bread. Not terribly appetizing. But, since mistakes are half the fun, I figured I'd post the pictures anyway.
The link for the no-knead recipe is http://steamykitchen.com/168-no-knead-bread-revisited.html. It's a wonderful thing. I think I'll be moving away from bread for a while, though. I want to try making a sourdough at some point. I made one years ago, and really enjoyed the yummy treats that came from it. I especially remember making lovely sourdough English muffins. For now, though, I'm a bit tired of bread. Yeah, I know. How can it be?

For supper on Saturday night, I made a potato bacon cheddar tart. I found the recipe on the Michael Smith website. I took pics, which I will post next time. Yes, it was lovely and decadent. Oooh-la-la

A Happy Mistake

One of the lovely things about cooking is that mistakes can lead us down an entirely new road of good things to eat. Sometimes they can even be better than what we intended to make.

A while ago, I mentioned wanting to make no-knead bread, and was sent a link to this page ~ http://steamykitchen.com/168-no-knead-bread-revisited.html~ from a dear friend. I made it once, loved it, and determined to make it repeatedly. Then it was Christmas and my baking skills were consumed with stollen and…well, basically stollen.

In January I decided to make the no-knead bread again, this time from memory as the ingredients are so simple. The bread didn’t turn out the same, though. It was a different texture, chewy and more moist with a less impressive crust than the original loaf had. It was still good, so I made it a few more times before I checked the original recipe and discovered that while I had the ingredients down, I wasn’t making the oven hot enough, and I wasn’t heating the cooking pot before dumping the dough in it to be baked. Ah, problem solved.

In the meantime, though, while eating a slice of the “mistake” bread, I was reminded of a coconut, white chocolate loaf that a bakery in one of our local grocery stores used to make. It had the same texture as the “mistake” loaves that I was making, and so one night while mixing the flour, salt, yeast and water, I added a cup of shredded coconut and half a cup of white chocolate chips to the batter. I baked it the way I had been doing it, in a 350 F oven. It was delicious.

Moist, coconutty, with just the right amount of sweetness from the white chocolate. It was especially good toasted with butter. It was a success.

So, now that I have discovered the error of my ways, my future loaves of no-knead bread will look more like those lovely, rich brown loaves on the recipe page. I’m going to make 2 loaves tonight, (one, plain no-knead and one coconut, white chocolate) and bake them tomorrow, so I will have pictures then.

In the meantime, the lesson is that sometimes mistakes can take you down a road that you never thought you’d find yourself on. I’m pretty sure that’s how snails came to be on the menu…

The Brilliant Julia Child

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“This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook — try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun!”