Artisan bread: so simple, so good….I hope you have yeast and flour in the cupboard

The joys of home baked bread have been known to me across many years and I became aware of the no-knead method through Edna Staebler’s Schmecks cookbooks. 

But a recent post by hakucho  had me skipping merrily into the kitchen and finding I did indeed have yeast and flour and immediately stirring up the four ingredients (salt and water are the other two). 

It was late so that first batch got put into frig (it will keep up to two weeks!) which was fine because a pizza stone is suggested and I had seen one at a weekly church sale and I was going to that sale the next day and- dah dah! – it was there.  Those "dah-dah"’s were destined to be overly optimistic because the stone broke in the oven while baking the bread (considerably startling the baker!) but the bread was fine.  Hang on a sec – I have to backtrack.

The dough from the frig got turned into a loaf quick-as-a-wink (the video link is useful) – I’d never formed a loaf in mid-air before and I may never form one on counter again) – and put on cornmeal on an inverted glass pie plate; something called a pizza peel was advised: in retrospect I think that must be a paddle; in any case I did not have one and the inverted glass pie plate did not work out because I could not slide the proofed dough onto the hot stone in the oven – it sort of deflated in my nudging with a spatula attempt.  But – dah dah! (and these can stand as stated, enthusiastically!) in spite of all these misadventures – what you see in the photo is that first loaf of artisan bread cut into slices and toasted – and delicious.  I had a slice when it first came from oven,  marvelled over the ciabatta-like holes, practically swooned over the flavour and crisp crust and fragrance.   Realized the density would be reduced with the next attempt which would not suffer being deflated.

Thank you hakucho!  And thanks also to Middle Son and DDL who are on a spree of pasta making and to whom I owe the homemade noodles; there is nothing quite like fresh pasta; made by loved ones is extra special. 

Okay, I have to enlarge on the sauce adventure.  I wanted the taste of the noodles to come through so decided on something simple for the sauce:  in the cast iron fry pan went some oil, three garlic cloves, a roma tomato and were cooked until they smelled just right.  Then a bit of water was added and the stuff put into the blender for a puree result.  Back into the fry pan.  Now I added something called a seafood medley and that got me chuckling because the first time I bought this mixture of shrimp and clams and oh, other seafoody stuff I had found it a bit tough and when I bought it again I mentioned this to the girl behind the counter who was weighing it up.  "Maybe you overcooked it,"
she said and then, noting the look on my face, she added, "Did you cook it too long?"  I had to admit that I hadn’t cooked it at all – I had simply added mayonnaise to it and used it in a sandwich.  So now the memory of that makes me smile when I do prepare it properly.

The waldorf salad is made with Ambrosia apples (my favourite next to Orin) and pecans.  I forgot to toast the pecans so they got eaten raw.  Don’t tell the girl in the seafood deli.

Here is the second batch of artisan bread just after being stirred up.

Below is the dough ‘proofing’ on the cast iron chappati pan.

Here it is just out of the oven and very fragrant!

And on the plate for dinner.  Still warm which is why it is not buttered until I took the photo and was ready to eat  – I like butter on top of bread, even warm bread, not melted into it.  That’s a simple egg salad and the apple is cox orange pippin – which I don’t really like – but buy at least once  during their short appearance each year because they are so pretty and, each year, I seem to forget that I don’t really like them….