Any Home Bakers Here?

[ronott1]

Getting better with this no-knead bread recipe. Took a while, and now DH has enough bread in the freezer to keep him happy for a couple months. Going to make another pullman loaf tomorrow, but this time it will go to a friend.
View attachment 2028594

That is a very nice looking french bread!

 

[ronott1]

Thanks! I already have a dozen+ of English muffins in the freezer for DH, and I dumped my sourdough starter a week or so ago because (a) wasn't happy with my sourdough results and was ready to give up on bread TOTALLY, and (b) taking a month-long trip next month and I'll be lucky if DH can keep up with chicken and dog chores while I'm gone ... forget about feeding the sourdough starter!

Freeze some of the starter. It will keep forever there

 

[ronott1]

That's easy since I know it by heart now! I bought the book, "The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day," recommended on this thread. I also the same recipe at the New York Times Cooking web site. Others have posted this recipe before me, so I'm not taking any credit for it here. And I wouldn't be using it if I didn't read about it here first!

The cookbook gives a whole bunch of things that you can do with this basic recipe, which I've yet to explore.

Simple Crusty Bread
1 1/2 tablespoons yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
6 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (910 grams), more for dusting
Cornmeal

In a large bowl or plastic container (my plastic container is 6 qts.), mix yeast and salt into 3 cups lukewarm water (about 100 degrees). Stir in flour, mixing until there are no dry patches. Dough will be quite loose. Cover, but not with an airtight lid. Let dough rise at room temperature 2 hours (or up to 5 hours).

Bake at this point or refrigerate, covered, for as long as 2 weeks. (I prefer to refrigerate before baking. I find the dough easier to handle.) When ready to bake, sprinkle a little flour on dough and cut off a grapefruit-size piece with serrated knife. (Lightly flouring your hands helps too.) Turn dough in hands to lightly stretch surface, creating a rounded top and a lumpy bottom. (At this point, you can decide on the shape of the loaf -- round, oval, long, etc. I sometimes put the dough into my banneton for the 40 minute rest period.) Put dough on pizza peel sprinkled with cornmeal; let rest 40 minutes. Repeat with remaining dough or refrigerate it.

Place broiler pan on bottom of oven. Place baking stone on middle rack and turn oven to 450 degrees; heat stone at that temperature for 20 minutes.

Dust dough with flour, slash top with serrated or very sharp knife three times. Slide onto stone. Pour one cup of hot water into broiler pan and shut oven quickly to trap steam. Bake until well browned, about 30 minutes. Cool completely.

Thanks for the Recipe!

 

[ThreeOfSeven]

Freeze some of the starter. It will keep forever there

Thanks, I'll remember that next time I'm ready to tackle it. <grin>

 

[ronott1]

Thanks, I'll remember that next time I'm ready to tackle it. <grin>

I can mail you a start from my starter. If you send me a pm with your address I will work on getting it out to you tomorrow. It will be a dehydrated powder so you can store it until ready to re hydrate it

 

[ThreeOfSeven]

I can mail you a start from my starter. If you send me a pm with your address I will work on getting it out to you tomorrow. It will be a dehydrated powder so you can store it until ready to re hydrate it

Sounds great!! Maybe I'll be ready to dive into it again especially since I picked up 25 lbs. of King Arthur flour the other day at Costco.

 

[DigMyChicks]

Your pizza looks great DMC!

Thanks Debby!

New here but I wanted to ask if anybody has a good frosting recipe? I made a chocolate zucchini cake last night and didn’t want to use my old buttercream frosting recipe so I tried a cooked frosting recipe from Pinterest. not so good
Does anybody have a favorite vanilla frosting recipe they would like to share?

Hi! What was your cooked frosting recipe?

 

[ThreeOfSeven]

Just throwing this out.

I noticed that King Arthur Flour has their summer class schedule up on the web site for both Washington and Vermont. I've been eyeing them for a while now but always found them all filled up (class sizes are small). I finally signed up for one (baguettes) for the fun of it. I'll already be up in Vermont for another class (natural dyes), so this will be fun to do while I'm there.

 

[bruceha2000]

I bought olive oil once, it went bad and I never bought any after that.

Like other things I suspect how much one likes and uses olive oil depends on how they grew up. It was always in our house growing up, grandparents also used it.

I'll already be up in Vermont for another class (natural dyes), so this will be fun to do while I'm there.

You are going to come visit us?

 

[ThreeOfSeven]

I'll be about 20 minutes outside of Montpelier, and then further SE for KAF in Norwich. DH and I both love Vermont.