Okay – I love bread, I am a bit of a bread-nerd actually. I make it every day – it has become a routine for me to whip it up before I go to bed, plunk it in the fridge overnight or tuck it in on the kitchen counter with a wet cloth on top and kiss it goodnight. Go to sleep, wake up, turn the oven on, make my tea, put the bread in the hot oven, have my shower and ………. voila freshly made warm and delicious bread!!!
But before I share the bread recipe, I have something really exciting to share!
The 1st of November I will be participating in an awesome event – The Virtual Vegan Potluck!! I participated in one in May this year and it was so much fun! More than 100 wonderful bloggers from all over the world will bring their amazing food creations to the Virtual Potluck table! So stay tuned in – come and visit and join the fun.
I am not vegan, but I enjoy to nourish my body by feeding it lots of plant-based foods, and more plant-based foods than other types of food. The Virtual Vegan Potluck is a great way to get inspired – I promise you – there will be lots of scrumptious recipes.
I will be creating a new dessert. I can reveal that I am making a raw food healthy version of an old (fat) favorite. It will be soft, wild, intense and super delicious. And at the time, I will be in Copenhagen, so it will be created directly from my Danish kitchen in the heart of the old city.
So stay tuned – 1st of November 2012 – and now to the bread!
It is becoming popular to bake bread in an extremely hot oven in a cast iron pot with a lid! I have been watching these developments for a while, but had never tried it. One small thing was that I didn’t have the pot! Then one day I saw a post from In Pursuit of more – one of my favorite blogs! Shira had made bread so delicious, in a cast iron pot – it was so gorgeously beautiful that bread, that I had to make it. I went straight out, bought a pot and went in the kitchen to make bread. Gosh I could hardly sleep that night – excited to get that bread in the oven!
Let just say it – it became the crispiest, crunchiest bread I have ever tried – it was sooooo good!
Here is my recipe:
2 cups of water
1 teaspoon dried yeast
3 tbs olive oil
2 teaspoon salt
4 cups wheat flour
1 cup rye flour
1/2 cup wheat to work the dough on the counter
In a big bowl – add the water, dissolve the yeast in the water add the olive oil and start adding the flour a little at the time, while constantly stirring, until you have a dough.
Cover with a wet cloth and leave it to rest
The longer you raise it the better the bread – so preferably overnight!
For this bread I left it for 4 hours in the bowl, on the kitchen counter. I will show you the difference – later. They both turned out really nice but, the one bread that was left overnight was crispier and had more air holes in the structure.
After the 4 hours – I carefully scooped it out on to a clean counter with 1/2 cup of flour – there I carefully folded it and dusted it with extra flour like this
No kneading needed – cover with a wet cloth and leave to raise for another 2 hours like this
After about an hour and a 1/2, turn the oven on to 450F. Once it has reached the temperature – put the cast iron pot and the lid into the oven. Let them heat up for a 1/2 hr – no need to grease it or oil it, just heat it.
After heating it – carefully – and equipped with what you need so as not to burn yourself, take out the pot – and carefully, carefully place the dough in this extremely hot pot
Put the lid on and put it back in the oven to bake for 35 min. After 35 min. remove the lid and continue baking for another 10 min.
Viola the bread is ready to enjoy!
And, for the more patient cooks:
Here is the bread that I made which had been raising overnight. It was made with just organic wheat flour.
“The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight” – M.F.K. Fischer
Anne Sture Tucker 