It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to make my signature whole multi-grain Nettie-Bread for the family. My back has not been cooperative and it’s a pretty big process to try to talk the kids through from a chair, so I had kind of given up on bread making.
However, I’ve been seeing so many of these “no-knead” artisan bread videos everywhere, I decided it might be worth a try. I found a simple recipe for a larger batch to make multiple loaves, and yesterday evening got a nice big lump of dough mixed up and set on the counter to grow. The recipe is very simple:
60 oz. cool tap water
2 Tbsp. table salt
1 rounded tsp. instant yeast
1 5lb bag of bread flour
Mix to a shaggy ball, cover and let sit for 8-24 hours.
(see this video for the rest of the process)
By morning, it looked like this:
I was excited to see what would happen if I waited the full 24 hours! However, after the kids came home from school I got their help to punch it down and get it into loaf pans to rise, so we could get it in and out of the oven before Dad had to go to bed.
For a first time effort, I would call it a modest success. I would still like to see a little more browning in the crust, and the rise was not everything I could have hoped for. I was also pretty confused by the tiny amount of yeast in the recipe… not sure I trust the process yet, but I will give it a few more tries before I start thinking I should tweak something. At any rate, there was a unanimous judgement from the fam that it was delicious, so it appears we are off on a new “breadventure” again!
