Glorious bread

Catching up with Jen's blog, I was introduced to this recipe by Mark Bittman, for a fabulous no-knead loaf. It really is seriously easy; just a bit of mixing (takes about 1 minute), an unattended long slow rise (approx 18hrs), which also develops the flavour, a bit of shaping, followed by a second (2hr) rise, then bake in a hot oven. And the results are fabulous.

I made the loaf with half wholewheat bread flour, rather than the original all white flour (I've been eating unrefined carbs for so long now, I almost can't bring myself to eat white bread!). And for any fellow Brits, the cup measurements convert to about 450g/1lb flour and 400ml/14 fl oz water. I baked it in a cast iron casserole measuring 23-25cm/9-10 inches in diameter. The dough was decidedly on the sticky side (I had to work in a fair bit of flour when shaping, just to make the dough possible to handle, so maybe with our different flour types you need a bit extra to start with), but as you can see, the recipe turned out looking fantastic. It tastes great too, and I love the texture; chewy crust and a moist (but not damp) crumb. And I didn't have any problems with it burning (although having baked it in the Aga, the oven temp is probably closer to 425F/220C/gas 7 than the specified 450F.

Thanks for the recipe pointer Jen - I can see that it really would be easy to make this loaf on a regular basis. Although it would also be far too easy to eat too much bread as well - I've already eaten a third of the loaf in the past 2 hours! Next however, I'm going to try Mark Bittman's recipe for sourdough (from How To Cook Everything), following Emilin's comments on Jen's original bread post. I've never had much luck with sourdough starters before, so it's good to get a personal recommendation for a recipe.