Hi, my name is Jacob and I bake my own bread

Exhibit "A" Bread For Tomorrow's Bruschetta

So recently I came across an article in the New York Times about how to make your own "no knead" bread and I thought, hey this sounds freaking easy enough so I thought I'd give it a try. When I was done, I couldn't even get the squirrels excited enough to the brick that I was left with. I'm sure this was just due to my not having ever baked anything aside from a Totino's pizza or maybe some of those instant cookies at 3am.

Well, anyway I wasn't going to let this discourage me and seeing as how i had to buy an $50 dutch oven to do it i was at least going to try it 2 or 3 more times before i gave up. I did a little research and found a video article on Breadtopia.com (yeah, there is such a place) that had an altered recipe from Cook's Illustrated that used, of all things, beer! Now this is some bread that i can get behind. Anyway, the second, third and 7th attempts have all been great and consumed by co-workers, family, and friends. I never realized how fulfilling or how easy making bread could be. I think I am now officially off of store bought bread. Here's the recipe:


Jacob’s almost no knead bread stolen from the Internets

White Flour Recipe:

FOOD STUFFS NEEDED:

1. 3cups (15 ounces) bread flour with extra for your hands and stuff
2. ¼ teaspoon instant yeast (bread machine yeast)
3. 1-1/2 teaspoons salt
4. ¾ cup plus 2 Tablespoons (7 ounces) water at room temperature
5. ¼ cup plus 2 Tablespoons (3 ounces) Beer – Lager work best but use whatever as long as it isn’t a really dark stout
6. 1 Tablespoon white Vinegar
7. Cornmeal and olive oil for later

NOTE: To make Wheat Bread, substitute 1 cup (5 ounces) of bread flour for whole wheat flour and also add 2 tablespoons honey or sugar in the raw.


KITCHEN ACCOUTREMENTS NEEDED:

1. Oven
2. 5-8 Quart cast iron or equivalent Dutch oven that you are not afraid to put into a 500 degree oven
3. Parchment paper
4. Plastic wrap
5. Kitchen Scale (or not, but seriously, yes)
6. 2.5 quart (around that) glass or metal or whatever kind a bowl you got – this is just used to let the dough rise
7. Flat surface for doing baking related things
8. Skillet for proofing the dough or you can just use afore mentioned flat surface
9. Spoon of some kind
10. Kitchen thermometer of some kind
11. Rack or something to let the bread rest on after it is done again can be substituted with #7
12. Glass for drinking the rest of that beer out of or just a coozie. Whatever.


NOW FOR THE BAKING PART

1. Ok, so adding all of this together is a lot easier and more accurate if you have a kitchen scale so I recommend that method of measurement. If not, just use the measurements listed above and it should be ok. That being said:
2. Combine all dry ingredients except cornmeal (flour, yeast, salt, duh) in a 2.5 quart glass (or whatever kind you have) bowl and stir them around a bit until they are just mixed up – kinda like me.
3. If you are using the scale method, zero it out at this point (can’t tell you how many times I forgot to do this part) and then add 7 ounces water, 3 ounces beer (bringing it up to 10 ounces liquid so far) then add the vinegar.
4. Start drinking beer
5. Stir this mess up just until all the dry is picked up in what looks like a big dough ball using a spoon or something like that that you can easily scrape off. I did this with my hands a couple times and I lost a lot of dough onto my fingers which is kinda pointless I think.
6. Cover with the plastic wrap and then let it sit at room temperature for about 12 hours but it can be as little as 8 or as much as 18. I use a marker to write the time I started on top but that’s cause I’m a ‘weirdo’. The dough will double in size.
7. Ok, after the dough has risen for the 8-18 hours, smell it and say “This smells kinda funny” or “Wow, this stuff got big and bubbly” then get over it and pour it out onto a well floured surface such as that mentioned above. At the same time, or a little before your weird comments, put a piece of parchment on top of the skillet (enough so that it goes over the edges) or flat surface and rub a bit of oil and then sprinkle some cornmeal in an area about the size of the dough ball
8. Flour your hands and the top of the dough blob a bit then ‘knead’ it by folding it over onto itself about 10 times. Don’t do it too much because you want to keep some of the air in there. If it is sticky use a little bit of flour.
9. Then sort of pull up the sides to the center and pinch them together creating a smooth flat side on the bottom. Then mold it in your hands into a roll keeping that ‘pinched’ side up
10. Then turn the roll over so the smooth side is up and put on your parchment.
11. Put a bit of oil on top of the dough (to keep the plastic wrap from sticking) and cover with plastic wrap.
12. Let that sit (proof) for about 2 hours
13. At mile marker 1 and a half hours of proofing, put your dutch oven into the oven and crank the temperature up to 500 and let it get hot for the final 30 minutes of proofing
14. After the 2 hours of proofing, take your smoking hot dutch oven out, remove the plastic from your dough, and put the parchment and dough all together into the dutch oven trying hard not to drop it so it keeps its shape. Put the lid back on, put the dutch oven back into the oven and lower the temp to 425 (it is ok if the parchment sticks out and actually makes it easier to get the bread out later)
15. After 30 minutes of baking, take the lid off of the dutch oven and cook for another 15 minutes or until the internal temperature is around 200 degrees and you have a nice brown crust
16. After all that, take the bread out, put it on a rack, maybe take a picture of it and send it to your sister and say “wow, I just made bread” or “As God is my witness, I shall never go hungry again!” or something to that effect.
17. Wait a couple hours (again) for it to cool and make a crust. Then, after all that, you can actually eat it.
18. Now go clean your kitchen because it is now covered with flour and dough and damn, dough can turn hard a fricken brick after a little while if you just let it sit there.