My Bread

“The first time I tried organic wheat bread, I thought I was chewing on roofing material”- actor Robin Williams

Unless your food storage is a mountain of tin cans or a closet full of freeze-dried meals, odds are that you will have a few buckets of wheat for emergency use. Now what will you do with that wheat? Back during the Y2K scare we got a good price on a wheat grinder so we were able to make decent flour but had little luck making bread from scratch. Most of our baking efforts came out like bricks with very little yeast rising. We checked our yeast - it was alive but not working for us.

A few months back my wife found a bread recipe that has worked perfectly every time. We now have a new loaf every few days. The recipe was first published in the New York Times back in 2006 by baker Jim Lahey. It was an immediate success with the public and Lahey used his moment of fame to publish a baking book called, My Bread. We've tried a few recipes - we really enjoyed the no-knead olive bread with green olives, no so much a loaf containing peanuts.

The full bread recipe is a bit big for just two; the loaf sometimes goes bad before we can finish it. This won't be a problem if you have kids.

Some things about the recipe that work for us.

1. The long rise time lets the yeast do its job.

2. Use a dutch oven or cast iron pot with lid. The bread rises very little in the oven so it takes the shape of the pot. We had a lot of round low loafs before my wife switched to 2/3 recipe and a cast iron tea pot to give the loaf some height.

3. Definitely preheat the pot (without the lid). We tired once with a cold pot and the bread stuck to the pot and did not want to come out. But with a hot pot and a little corn meal tossed in before the bread, we have no sticking.

4. My wife now mostly skips mini-knead and second rise step. She lets it rise for as long as 24 hours in winter when our house is cold. Then while the pot is preheating in the oven she'll punch the bread or move it around a little inside the rising bowl if it looks too gassy.

5. As some versions of the recipe state, the hardest part is waiting for the bread to cool for one hour after de-potting. The author says this is essential and we haven't broken the rule yet.

Bottom Line

Try it - you'll like it! We liked it so much we bought the book after first borrowing it from the library.