Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Refining the bread recipe

Trying to repeat the success of Friday's bread, I'm making another batch (I did a batch on Sunday/Monday, which was good, but not as amazingly great as Friday's): I'm taking better notes of what I do:
This evening, late (just now, in fact):
1 cup of warm water
1 cup of flour
1 teaspoon of yeast
stirred together in a mixing bowl, covered with plastic wrap, left in a 65 degree (or so) room to ferment.

Tomorrow morning, early, I'll add enough flour to make a soft dough, leave it to rise for several hours: then I'll break the dough into 1 ounce chunks (approximately), soften them in about a cup or so of warm water, add about a teaspoon of yeast, enough flour that it becomes a soft dough, and a bit less than a tablespoon of kosher salt. Knead for several minutes until satiny, leave to rise, shape, rise, slash and bake at 400 or so until done, between 30 and 45 minutes, I expect.

Yours, on a knead to know basis,
N.

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

N, your closing lines nearly always make me laugh out loud. You have a gift!
And I have just about given up on homemade bread. I must be kneading it too much...or not enough...or something...but it rarely turns out well. I made a loaf once that was so hard that we threw it out for the birds. It took three weeks for the birds to peck it to death.

BreadBox said...

Jennifer, never give up!
N.