Here is a stop motion video of me shaping the buns from the previous post.

There has been a lot written about no knead bread at this point so I’m not really going to get into the history and details. I got the basic recipe here and it’s just the base recipe from this book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking.

I have a lot of trouble baking bread. I don’t know if it’s some kind of bread A.D.D., but going through all of the steps to create a perfect traditional loaf of bread kind of has me stumped. After trying this recipe (I only did a half for my first two attempts) I’m a firm believer in this style of baking bread.

Just a few last thoughts, For the buns I removed slightly large than golf ball sized chunks and shaped them into little boules. The steam part might seem a little weird but it’s really what is going to produce the perfect crust. And let me reiterate, the steam part is dangerous, be careful. In the bread bible aka Bread Bakers Apprentice goes into a lot more detail about the whole steam process and they suggest opening the oven and spraying the sides of the oven at 30 second intervals to really get a lot of steam going.

Now what should you do with these fine buns? I did end up smearing some honey butter on one of them but my favorite was this little bacon sandwich.

Here is a video showing how to shape the bread

Pretty… pretty shitty.

I already twittered about my tuscan bread failure so this is a little late. Over the weekend I made my first loaf of bread. I followed the recipe in Bread Bakers Apprentice (Google has the full recipe). I made a paste. Let it sit over night. The next day I mixed up the yeast, water, flour etc. Let the machine knead the life out of the dough. Then I let it rise (ferment). Punched it down. Let it rise some more. I rolled it out into two boules. Then Rachel and I had to run out to dinner so I decided to let it proof in the fridge over night. I don’t know where I went wrong (probably using AP flour for a recipe that said bread flour). End result the bread tasted kind of yeasty and bland and really just didn’t have the right texture. At least it looks like bread though.

To be continued…