Bread doodles

 

Post-Impressionism / Vincent van Gogh/ Hand with a Pot, the Knob of a Chair and a Hunk of Bread

So, I managed to get squeezed out of social obligations today.  Imagine my sorrow.  

So I decided to spend some time using up the flour I bought during last year's panic.  

There are recipes out there about the folks who have discovered “no knead” bread.  Most of these try to give you the idea that their personal genius was the sole source of the recipe that they so lovingly lay down next to their google-inspired ads for kitchen devices.  They are usually presented by attractive Karens that married well and want to profit off their perceived status.

I am just making bread.  In the panic of 2020, I spent $100.00 of my COVID loot on a second tier mixer with a dough hook (Hamilton Beach, $100).  So when I found out that my presence was not strictly required, I said what the hell.

Bread just ain’t that hard unless you make it that way.  Here is my pilot recipe:

• 3 cups flour

• ½ cup oatmeal

• Yeast (today I pulled the pack out of the freezer)

• Salt

• 1-½ cups of water

That's it, put it in the mixer with the dough hook, set a timer for ten minutes and walk away.  When the timer goes off, use a scraper to scoop the dough out onto a floured surface and then poof around with it until it is covered with the flour.  Spray the bowl with PAM and then flop the dough back into the bowl.

Let it rise for four hours.

Punch it down and transfer it to a PAMMED bread pan and let it rise for an hour.

Bake for an hour.

Outcome:

Well, it tastes good and the crumb is just right.  But it really isn’t very “poofie” I guess I am used the the semi circular upper part of a cross-section an this one was flat on the top. I think that next weekend I will up the flour to 3-½ cups to see if it can be firmed up a little.  Either that or add a couple of tablespoons of oil to the dough and repeat the process.

The other thing that I could try once I get the ingredients settled down is to vary the amount of time that I let the dough ferment.  It seems that four hours is adequate, and the taste is pretty darned good, but since a lot of the recipes by Karen call for twelve hour ferments, I probably should run through a couple of different conditions to see what the effect is.  Karens aren’t always wrong.

Like I said before, not at all a failure, just not quite there yet