from Kris B.

Peasant Bread

And here we give you what you should have gotten last week…:-)

I love bread.  Almost any kind of bread.  For many, homemade bread carries with it the notion that it is a difficult and time-consuming task.  Nothing is further from the truth.  Think about it.  Every culture has some kind of bread as part is its basic diet.  This is because these breads are easily made from staple ingredients.

King Arthur Flour’s recipe for Peasant Bread (originally from Alexandra Stafford’s book Bread Toast Crumbs) is a simple no-knead bread recipe that makes a perfect everyday bread.  It consists of only five ingredients:

• all-purpose flour
• kosher salt
• sugar
• yeast
• water

It is also necessary to coat your baking pan with butter or some other cooking spray to prevent sticking.

In a mixing bowl, all of the dry ingredients are whisked together.  Lukewarm water is then added to form the dough.  This dough is a very sticky dough.  Fortunately it is left to rise in the mixing bowl so there is no need (no pun intended) to handle as it’s stickiness would make that difficult.  The dough rises until it is doubled in bilk, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.  Mine took only an hour.

After this first rise, the dough is transferred to a 3 quart (or 2 one 1 quart) oven-safe pan or bowl.  During its short second rise, 10-20 minutes, the oven is preheated to 425 degrees.  The dough is ready to go into the oven when it is almost doubled.  It bakes at 425 degrees for 15 minutes.  The temperature is then reduced to 375. The large single loaf bakes for 20-25 minutes and the two smaller loaves for 17-20 minutes.

The loaf in the photo is the single large loaf.  For my family, it makes no sense to make two loaves.  Bread disappears quickly!

The Peasant Bread is a basic loaf, but that makes its quite versatile.  It’s soft and chewy texture makes a nice sandwich bread, garlic toast to accompany soup or salad, a nice snack with a little butter, or, as I first had it, a fantastic piece of toast with peanut butter!

Well actually, I cheated a bit.

I am still working hard to shed some extra pounds.  My love of both bread and peanut butter can easily derail that effort!  This bread recipe has no fat in it.  That helps. And, my friend Joni introduced me to an awesome peanut butter substitute, PB2 Powdered peanut butter.  I know what you are thinking.  How can that substitute for the real thing?  Trust me.  I am serious about my peanut butter.  Usually I make it myself, but I am willing to go this route for a while.  It really is pretty good!  2 TBS or powder mixed with a TBS of water.  Because homemade peanut butter lacks the oil found in commercial peanut butters, the texture and consistency of the PB2 is not a whole lot different from what I’m used to.  And it’s 50 calories for a 2 TBS serving as compared to 180 calories in the same size serving of regular peanut butter.

There is also a PB2 variety with chocolate.  Mix this with a little frozen whipped topping and you have a tasty low-calorie dip for fruit.

Sorry for the diversion.  Back to the Peasant Bread…

It’s easy and it’s delicious!  Try it.

from Tracey G.

No-Knead 100% Whole Wheat Bread

So, I’m on this wanting to eat well kick, not diet necessarily, just better fuel going in. I usually buy a really low-calorie bread for my sandwiches, like 35-calories-per-slice kind of thing when I’m trying to watch what I’m eating. Honestly though, it tastes like how I imagine cardboard would taste – like nothing. With wanting to eat better, I decided there has to be something I can make at home – that way I know what’s going in and I can slice it how I want it. That brought me to a mission, to see what I can find that’s reasonable in calories, and, offers some nutritious benefits.

After searching around King Arthur Flour website, I found quite a few that sounded good, but this recipe, No-Knead 100% Whole Wheat Bread, had the lowest calories per slice (120), and offered a super easy preparation. That cinched it for me, this was what I was making. I could easily keep myself in bread for my sandwiches and my new favorite lunch before or after I hit the treadmill: toast spread with peanut butter, sprinkled with cinnamon and then topped with banana slices. It’s got all kinds of goodness!

The recipe is close to a batter-style bread, and it’s a dump it all together combining of the ingredients, and then mixed up in your mixer. You run it for 3 minutes, then dump it into your well-cooking-sprayed pan. Next it rises for an 1 to 1 1/2 hours and then you bake! Yay!

Ingredients include:

•  lukewarm water
•  orange juice
•  melted butter or vegetable oil
•  molasses, maple syrup, dark corn syrup, or brown sugar corn syrup
•  instant yeast
•  Baker’s Special Dry Milk or nonfat dry milk (if you don’t have any dry milk on hand, you can use lukewarm milk for the water and dry milk)
• teaspoons salt
• 3 cups King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour

Well. Huh. This did not go as planned at all. I’ve made it 3 times now and all three have turned out looking like bricks of banana bread. The first two I thought were operator error – I used regular whole wheat flour, instead of the White Whole Wheat Flour it calls for (more on that a bit farther down). That’s what happens when you don’t pay attention to the recipe you’re reading. Ugh. So, I dug into the reviews and it sounded like I was letting them rise too much – then when they hit the oven, they rise and then deflate. Ok, must be the regular whole wheat flour I used – that was my solution to this problem.

But let me say right here though – I really liked how it tastes, it’s not pretty by any means, but tastes pretty darned good.

Anyway, after the first two loaves, I read the recipe again, and even read their blog post dedicated to this bread (click here for that post). That’s when I noticed I used the “wrong” flour. Ok! That’s what happened, yes, I can turn this fail around! I grabbed the last bit of my White Whole Wheat Flour and started a third loaf. Yep, my third attempt.

Maybe I should be of the mind “three strikes you’re out” with this because once again, a brick shape, but I’m not. I’m fairly positive that I definitely let this one over-proof as it kind of overflowed the edges of the pan. This is a new thing for me because it doesn’t rise like a regular loaf, and you’re not supposed to let it get as high as you would a regular loaf – so I was in new territory for me here, not used to looking for different rising criteria, and this one qualified as a bit different! So, I’m fairly confident that contributed to the fails today.

I want to like this bread, I want to make this bread and have it turn out like their photo of how it should look. So, I know as soon as I get some more White Whole Wheat Flour I will be back into the laboratory kitchen to try again. However many times it takes to get a win with this darn recipe!

I’d also love to be able to say “make this now! It’s easy and turns out perfect!”, but I can’t because it hasn’t yet for me. It’s so ridiculously easy, if you can mix up a quick bread, you can do this one too. But, it’s the rise that seems to be fussy, although their blog post on it shows it doing beautifully. So, it depends on how adventurous you’re feeling or if you’re a gambler, lol. It has great taste even if it doesn’t rise to the occasion for me, but that  doesn’t mean it won’t for you! If you try it – let me know, I’m curious as to the results you get!