Rustic No-Knead Loaf (White)
This recipe is an adaptation of this wonderful recipe, with a few tweaks.
Ingredients:
450g strong white bread flour
1 (7g) sachet fast action/dried yeast
1 tsp table salt
375ml very warm water (not boiling hot, but not tepid)
Recipe:
In a large bowl, add the flour, then the yeast and salt on opposite sides of the bowl. Mix until well combined.
Add the warm water and bring together with a wooden spoon until a wet dough forms.
Cover with a tea towel and let it rise somewhere warm for 2hrs (minimum, 3hrs maximum). The dough should have almost tripled in size, and you should see lots of air bubbles in the dough through the bowl.
Preheat the oven to 180oC.
Line either a metal or ceramic baking dish with greaseproof paper and dust the bottom lightly with flour.
Boil some water and pour it into a separate dish (of any material).
Pour the dough straight from the bowl into your lined tin.
Dust the top of the dough lightly with flour.
Place the dish with water on the bottom shelf, and the tin with the dough on the middle shelf.
Bake for 35mins with the water bath, then remove and bake for a remaining 20mins.
Cool before slicing and eating. Enjoy lathered in butter, jam or any toast topping of your choice.
What is the water bath for?
Adding a tray of boiling water into the oven to bake your bread means that when the two are in together, the water will evaporate and create steam in the oven.
This allows the surface of the loaf to stay moist, meaning it won’t form a crust/harden so quickly - it can rise for longer and you get a nice, fluffy and moist inside.
When you then remove it, the crust on the outside forms a bit better and also means that you don’t get a soggy bottom on your bread - if you kept it in, you’d essentially just keep steaming the bottom of your bread and we can’t be having that!
Price calculations
Waitrose strong white bread flour - 42p (450g)
Alison’s yeast - 23p (1 sachet)
Fine crystal sea salt (3p)
Water - 10p (I guessed, I don’t know how much water costs)
Electricity - 65p (how much our meter went up by, includes pre-heating time)
Loaves on a supermarket shelf are designed to do exactly that - sit on a shelf. Even the ‘freshly baked’ loaves in a lot of supermarkets and as ‘freshly baked’ as they’d like you to believe. The dough often comes frozen, and they bake it that morning, but the doughs typically also contain additives and preservatives.
Pros
House smells like a bakery
Sensory challenge
Exercises patience
Minimal physical effort
Relatively affordable ingredients
No additives or preservatives
The taste of fresh bread is (to me) undeniably better than shop bought
Cons
If you’re not very patient, it may seem annoying to wait
Depending on your electricity bill, it could be more expensive than buying a loaf
I can’t think of any more cons because I’ve loved this experience from start to finish
A Bite Out of Life
Scrolling through my SD to find A Bite Out of Life for this post and I scrolled right back to November - Thanksgiving. A tradition my family has celebrated for 25 years with our closest family friends, from way back when they used to study (EU) and started celebrating to make their new American friend feel at home, so far away from home (US).
Every year we now rent a house somewhere in the English countryside, and all meet from each corner of our world to spend the weekend walking, talking, but mostly eating.
This photo shows a moment during the first evening where we all arrived. We dumped our bags at the door, collapsed and sank into the sofas with a (few) bottle(s) of wine, got the fire roaring and our dear friends from Switzerland placed this big bag on the table. It was torn open like a crisp packet on a Friday night down at our local, and everyone grabbed one to share. Chocolate Christmas bauble decorations, all the way from the land of Lindt. No doubt a t-shirt or a pair of shoes was sacrificed along the way, all in the name of making room to bring gifts to share. A sentiment that was appreciated by everyone holding a glass, and one I still hold dear to this day.
Watch my Thanksgiving round-up reel here.
