Delicious Home Made So Easy Bread

A few months ago my hubby encouraged me to get over my fear of baking bread. It really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but the hard part was that it felt like a never ending all day task. You mix the ingredients together, and I own a kitchen aid so really this involves dumping the ingredients in and letting the dough hook do its thing, however its the rising that gets me. You mix it, let it rise, punch it down, shape it, let it rise, bake it, cool it, eat it...blah blah blah etc. Part of it is because I am not patient. The other part is because I am so type A. So type A I don't even know if I have an ounce of type B in me. I have a to do list dangit and I am going to select something on it, get it done in 5 minutes or less, multi task something else on my to do list while I am doing the first thing and be done with my to do list by 9AM. Bread...well bread doesn't work this way. It really does take several hours. So I started doing my research. Or well google research. Not sure that you can call online searching actual research cause it doesn't necessarily come from credible sources but you get what I mean.

Anyway, so a few days ago I found the wonderful world of no knead breads. This opens up a whole new world of options to people like me. My hubby, the chef, was skeptical. He of course knows the science behind bread making, and in his eyes he knows the kneading, and the second rise are important parts of the gluten in the bread developing enough to get an end result that is a fluffy loaf of bread. Not too dense. Which can result from not letting it rise long enough, etc. I asked him to give it a chance and he obliged. Why is this so called no knead bread so wonderful? I seriously worked on it for like 8 minutes tops. Maybe not even! This type of bread allows you to mix the ingredients together and let it sit covered for 12-18 hours, then you can come back to it, shape it and let it rise in your loaf pan and then put it in the oven. I know it sounds similar to regular bread but to me it was so much less time because my bread was making itself while I was sleeping (a multi tasking, type A persons dream!).

Here is the recipe I used and a picture of the loaf this person made...mine ended up just as pretty if not prettier :)

http://noknead.com/recipes/loaf-breads/light-oat-bread-no-knead-loaf-recipe.php

The end result:
Very pretty to look at. A little more dense than my chef judge husband said it should be but he said overall it tasted really good. Regardless I was very pleased with it, and for those who don't have a chef as a husband whose favorite thing to make is bread....no one else would be able to tell the difference. I am going to try something though to help get a loaf of bread that Dave really enjoys. So my next goal is to see if I can lessen the density. I tried to find some tips online for this issue but couldn't find much help. One thing I did read that intrigued me was some people will use high gluten flour to correct this and had good results (because of the no kneading, using a flour with higher gluten content would correct this issue and still give you the ease of letting the dough sit overnight etc). The other thing I want to try is making it into mini loaves and freezing it cause lets face it, a family of three, with one who doesn't even eat solids yet can't use up a homemade loaf of bread very quickly and this trying to lose baby weight mama doesn't need lots of carbs...I just wanted soup, salad, and bread for dinner tonight :)(Dave is also skeptical of this but I think its worth a shot....I read somewhere that you can pop it in the oven after freezing for a few minutes to revive it)
Give it a try...it's so easy and will make you feel like you did something awesome cause you made homemade bread!
Bon appetit!