Easy No Knead Bread

 People often find bread making an intimidating task, and yes we are talking about some basic chemistry here anytime we contemplate baking, but we are not building an orbital booster here! All we want to do is make an easy bread using some basic equipment any home cook likely already has.  The one piece of equipment that might be lacking is a Dutch oven.  But even if you don't have one, a good cast iron skillet will work! And don't worry, you don't need a fancy, expensive stand mixer either.

This recipe is also beneficial on a couple other fronts.  If you've been in the stores during the current pandemic you might have found that yeast is sometimes hard to find.  And if you have yeast, you may be asking yourself if you have enough.  Well this recipe only takes 1/4 teaspoon of yeast, so if you find yourself scraping the bottom of that yeast jar, you'll probably have enough.

Also, people with arthritis will find this recipe useful because their is no kneading involved.  Basic chemistry and mother nature will take care of that.  You will need a scraper, or a spatula, which I use to shape the dough into a ball. If you are on a Keto diet, you can substitute almond or coconut flour.

Ingredients:

3 cups of bread flour or all-purpose flour (either will do), sifted into a large bowl.

1/4 Tsp yeast

11/2 cups hot tap water (no hotter than 130 degrees, or it will kill the yeast)

1 Tsp salt

1-2 Tbsp of flour reserved for the bench to shape the dough

Two large bowls, one filled with parchment paper

Preparation:

Combine the salt and yeast with the flour in the bowl and mix.  Then pour in the hot water and mix with a spatula until the until the flour begins to come together, and no dry flour is on the side of the bowl.  Cover this bowl and let it stand for at least three hours.

After this time you will see that the dough is bubbly and should have nearly doubled in size.  Flour your working area and pour the dough out onto it, taking a spatula or a scraper and folding the dough over several times into the shape of a ball.  Sprinkle more flour if you find the dough too sticky to work with.

Now take the dough ball and place it in the clean bowl in which you have placed a large sheet of parchment paper.  It is okay if the parchment spills over the side of the bowl.  Cover this bowl with a towel for 30 minutes.

While your dough is rising a second time put into a cold oven on the middle rack the Dutch oven with the lid on, and then preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  When the 30 minutes have elapsed, carefully remove the dutch oven from the stove with mitts and set aside on a heat proof surface, removing the lid.  A large elevated wire rack works great for this, or if you don't have one the stove top will be fine. Then carefully lift the parchment and dough ball out of the bowl and place them inside the dutch oven, replacing the lid.

Return the Dutch oven to the oven and bake, lid on for 30 minutes.  At the end of that time remove the lid and continue to bake for another 10-15 minutes, until the bread is a nice golden brown. At the end of this time, remove the Dutch oven from the stove and let cool off on the rack or stove top.  It bears repeating that the Dutch oven and lid will be extremely hot during this, so please exercise due caution when handling it.  Handling the hot Dutch oven is not a task for kids!

The bread will be very easy to lift out of the Dutch oven by the parchment paper and will have a nice rustic look.  There are all kinds of variations for topping this bread while baking, but the standard recipe above works well. 

If you do not have a Dutch oven, you can use a good large cast iron skillet.  You won't be able to cover it, but the bread will rise just fine.

If you desire to have your bread rise overnight for baking in the morning, use cold water rather than hot.  That will increase the proof time to eight hours, but the results will be the same, a nice bubbly dough ball that has self-kneaded by the action of the yeast!   Enjoy!

That Perfect French Fry!

One of my food weaknesses in life are French fries! I work out, I watch what I eat now and I am trying to keep my weight and cholesterol down. It’s a struggle but it is also something most of us wrestle with, especially as we grow older.

So when I indulge in fries I try not to get the fast food kind, but go the frozen route, and bake them in the oven. But that’s no bargain either because the fries are laden with fat, salt and chemicals before they are frozen, so there is the dilemma.

This weekend I was watching America’s Test Kitchen and the subject of making good fries at home was on the program. If you want a detailed explanation of how they came up with the procedure I am about to describe you can go to their website for the information. What I am going to do is simply discuss my experience with making them the way they prescribe.

The suggestion is to start with cold peanut oil and Yukon Gold potatoes, sliced evenly into ¼ -inch sticks. Don’t bother peeling because this type of potato has a very thin skin. America’s Test Kitchen insists that the procedure does not work as well with other potato varieties. You are after a crunchy golden brown outside and a creamy interior.

Place the potatoes in a large frying pan and cover with cold peanut oil. Wait! Won’t the potatoes soak up all that oil? According to the testers, no they won’t. The amount of oil that is soaked into the potatoes is proportionate to the temperature. The higher the heat, the more water is driven out and replaced by the oil!

So bring the potatoes and oil to a rolling boil. When the oil first starts to vigorously boil, start a timer! Fifteen minutes maximum. And don’t stir them around, except to gently separate any that are stuck either to the side of the pan or together. You don’t want to break up the potatoes.

At fifteen minutes or when the potatoes have that golden brown color, remove them from the oil with a slotted spoon or spatula and place on paper towels to drain. Salt at this time to taste, and you are ready to dine!

I tried this method today and it worked great! I only used one medium potato so I didn’t quite need the entire 15 minutes they called for (I could visually see the browning that I wanted in the pan). The fries were crunchy, creamy and not at all greasy or soggy. The cool thing about it is that I wasn’t ingesting seven or eight chemicals that I can neither, pronounce, spell nor wish to eat, and I was able to control the salt content.

So what about deep fryers? We've never owned one because we don't fry foods all that often. The show tested six fryers during their research into making the perfect French fry and found that none of them gave very good results. Fries invariably turned out soggy and oily.

If you are on a strict diet, fries are problematic. But we are talking about occasional indulgences here and not a dietary staple. Try it for yourself and see!