Southwest 4
or 5, veering west 3 later.
Slight,
occasionally moderate.
Showers.
Good,
occasionally poor.
As mentioned
before, baking bread for one person is a bit of a challenge. First of all it is
not a question of just halving the ingredients and second my bread machine cant
cope with such a small amount of dough. And sometimes I cant cope with making
dough by hand. I have arthritis. It is not bad (yet), it comes and goes (still)
and even when I have an “attack”, I can still move my hands, albeit with a bit
of pain. It is a shadow of things to come. And I dread the day when it gets
worse.
Especially
if I think about bread making. The other day I had such an attack while making Pide
and my heart sank. I literally salted the dough with tears of pain. Since then
I experiment with my favourite bread, the glorious No-Knead bread.
It tastes
fantastic, a bit like a mixture between a sourdough and very rustic farmers
bread, it is dead easy to make and the best: it is No-knead. Nope, no kneading
necessary.
There are
two disadvantages which can be easily overcome: it is very time-consuming- you “work”
for a max of 5 minutes in total but need around 18 hours resting time- and you
need a “Dutch Oven” (casserole pan),
commonly sold as Le Creuset or its imitators. It needs a heavy lid. But it is
worth buying it for that purpose alone, I actually think about buying the smallest version just for making this bread better for one. Just want to check first how much they are in France.
If you are
not familiar with the idea of the No-knead bread, please watch this video. It explains the easy-peasy steps in detail
It also uses
different flours, which I won’t for your first time.
As you might
have noticed, the ratio between flour and water is 2:1. This is okay if you
make the bread for a family and use 3 cups of flour or for a large family and
use 6 cups of flour. But if you get lower, you need to add a bit more water.
BTW, I
should have said it long ago: If I talk of cups and teaspoons, I don’t mean the
US system where you have exact sized plastic cups, but I use one of my coffee cups
for all and a teaspoon is my teaspoon. However, if you like baking you ought to
invest in the exact plastic pots. You can pick them up in most supermarkets and
they look like this
or you can buy this fun looking Russian doll .
Anyway, back
to the liquid business. If you use 2 cups of flour you should add 1 cup of
water and one tbsp, if you use 1 cup of flour and ½ cup of water you should add
a tbsp and a tsp more of water. Or, if you want to follow my recipe: Kefir or
buttermilk.
If you don’t
have either, use water for your first time, but do try it next time with kefir,
the taste is so much better.
The
following recipe is enough for one person to have enough bread for a day, or a
huge lunch sandwich or for two people with a soup or stew.
No-Knead Bread for One
1 cup of
plain flour and an extra half a cup for flouring the surface
1/8 of a
teaspoon of dried yeast
1/8 of a
teaspoon of salt
(honestly, don’t
faff about, just use a generous pinch each)
½ cup of
water
1+1/2 tbsp
of kefir
Mix the cup
of flour, salt and yeast in a bowl, add the two liquids and stir for a minute
or two. The dough will be very wet.
Cover with
cling film and leave outside (so not in the fridge) at room temperature for 12
hours or more, but not longer than 16.
Generously
flour a piece of baking paper and scrap that stringy looking mess onto it. Sprinkle
more flour on top and into your hands and stretch it apart so you end up with flat
dough. Fold one third in and do the same with the opposite side. Now fold one third
of the top in and the same with the bottom. It will probably look like a square-ish
ball. Cover with more flour and put a tea towel on top, but try to avoid a
terry towel. Leave to rest for about 15 minutes, then turn it upside down so
the bread is now on the towel with the seam side down. Cover again with flower
and top with either another towel or the sides of yours. Leave for about two
hours. It might not rise very much, but when you poke it you should see a dent.
Preheat oven
to 240C for at least half an hour and put your casserole pan, including lid, in
it while it warms up. The cooking vessel should be blazing hot, so you better
have a good oven glove when you remove the lid later.
Once the
dough and oven is ready, quickly remove the lid of the pan and dumb the bread
upside down into the pan. The seam side will be now up. Cover with the lid and
bake closed for 15 minutes. Check and see if it needs a bit more, I tend to add
about 5 more minutes, still with the lid on and about 3 minutes to give it more
crust without lid if desired (rarely needed but this is up to personal taste).
Take the bread out (I use a slotted turner for this: The bread comes out very
easily and I just leave the pan in the oven to cool down) and let cool down on
a rack.
Enjoy.
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