Well, I haven't contributed for a while, so I thought I would give it a shot. First, I thought I would share two bread making tips that I am beyond embarrassed that I learned only recently. Having cooked for many years, the fact that these two tips escaped me all these years is mortifying. Having said that, maybe there is at least one other person out there as dumb as me...
1. We keep our house relatively chilly in the winter. It's definitely too chilly for raising bread dough. Turn the oven light on an hour before you're going to mix the dough. Put the dough in the oven and leave that light on during the entire first rise. It makes for a nice, warm, draft-free place for the yeast to do its thing.
2. We use proofing baskets for the second proof. I was so focused on getting that nice shape imprinted on my loaf that I was making my life way more difficult than it needs to be. Flour the basket and dump the dough in to proof. When it's time to drop the dough into the piping hot dutch oven, it sticks and then falls out at a weird angle and you get a misshapen loaf. Now, I put parchment paper in the basket first and then plop the dough on top of it and cover it with a towel. When it's time to drop the dough, just grab the parchment paper and quickly and easily drop a nicely shaped ball of dough into the pot, still nestled in the parchment paper. Some say to remove the parchment paper when you take the lid off the dutch oven. I've removed it and left it in without noticing a difference.
Lately, we've been making our own bread every other day. We've ditched the standard no-knead bread in favor of two other recipes. The first recipe makes a nice, perhaps slightly bland loaf but it's easy to make it in a few hours. The second is Ken Forkish's recipe that uses a poolish that is made the day before. This produces a more flavorful bread (maybe a slightly better crumb), but it's definitely more work.
1. Turbo No-Knead Bread (sorry, it's not by weight):
- 3.5 cups of flour
- 1.5 tsp salt
- 1.25 tsp yeast
- 13 ounces of very warm water
Mix the ingredients and allow the dough to rise for at least 90 minutes.
Remove the dough from the oven, if that's where it's raising. Set the oven to 450-500 degrees F and put the dutch oven inside. Drop the dough onto a floured surface and work it a bit. We do the Lahey pull and fold method, pulling out from each side of a square and folding over. We do this 3-4 times (12-16 total folds) and then shape the dough into a ball, dropping it into a proofing basket protected with parchment paper and covering it with a towel. Let this second proofing take 45-60 minutes.
When ready, pull the dutch oven from the oven, take off the lid, and drop the dough and parchment paper into the pot and cover. Bake for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, take the lid off and bake another 10-20 minutes.
2. The poolish method.
For this, I'll just link to a site that covers it nicely. As I said, this loaf has deeper flavors and might have a slightly nicer crumb. If you can plan a day in advance, you might think it's worth the extra effort (others will say, "meh" and just go for the turbo). The dough produced here isn't as wet as the Lahey/Forkish no-knead, so it's a bit easier to work with.
This white bread with poolish is based on the Forkish method from Flour, Water, Salt & Yeast and baked in a Dutch Oven Combo Baker.
www.breadexperience.com
COMFORT FOOD!
Finally, here is a recipe that makes a wonderful comfort food. It has to be one of the more highly praised meals I've made in a while. I do three things differently from this recipe. First, I substitute boneless chicken thighs for the breasts. Second, I also add 4 sticks of chopped celery. Third, I use a melon baller to make the dumplings, rather than a large spoon. We prefer smaller, less doughy dumplings.
INGREDIENTS
Soup
2 tablespoons oil
2 pounds chicken breasts
1 large onion, diced
4 carrots, sliced to ¼ in half rings
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
6 cups chicken broth
½ cup heavy cream
½ teaspoons dried thyme
2 bay leaves
1 ½ cups frozen peas
4 tablespoons fresh minced parsley
Dumplings
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 ⅓ cups heavy cream
PREPARATION
In a 6-quart dutch oven, cook chicken over medium-high heat until brown on both sides.
Once chicken pieces are browned, remove and set aside.
Add carrot and onion and cook until just tender, about 3 minutes. Add garlic and stir for another minute.
Reduce heat to medium-low and add butter and flour, stirring constantly for 3 minutes to avoid lumps.
Add chicken and any accumulated juices back to dutch oven and stir to to coat in roux/vegetable mix.
Add chicken broth, cream, thyme, and bay leaves and bring to a simmer. Once soup is at a simmer, add frozen peas and cover.
In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, pepper, and cream. Stir until mixture comes together into single mass of dough. Using a large spoon or ice cream scoop, form dough into small round balls about 1 inch in diameter (this dough mixture should yield 14-16 dumplings). Place dough balls into simmering soup (making sure they don’t touch), and cover. Let soup simmer for 15 minutes or until dumplings are cooked (they should pass the toothpick test). Ladle into bowl, giving 1-2 dumplings per serving.
For reference, here is the source of the recipe (I never bothered to watch the video):