The First Bread Tasting

I was very excited to have friends over last night for a bread tasting! The idea was to get the newly baked bread consumed by friends, and get some constructive suggestions from those that are bakers. There were two different breads to taste, compare, comment on etc. Of course that sets up the head to head battle. Although it wasn't terribly competitive. One won hands down.

I had a Cuban bread and the famous No-Knead bread. No-Knead bread easily turned in a definitive victory. Really I never envisioned that this project would produce bread of that quality. Ever.

Jan and Charles were ready to go out and buy an expensive oven to replicate the bread until I said that the fancy oven didn't have anything to do with it. It was the Le Creuset dutch oven that provided all the magic. And it was magical. So I promised Jan and Steph that I would repost the recipe for the No-Knead bread. Now let me say a little more about it.

It had an awesome crispy crust that wasn't too thick, with a lovely holey moist, and slightly chewy center. Like the best restaurant bread you get. When i took it out to cool, it started making a crackling sound. That made me a little worried thinking maybe my bread was collapsing, so I immediately started searching around on the web. Turns out, that's a very desirable trait; much sought after by bakers. Who knew! I even found other blogs of people who said "i never knew i could make bread this good. It even crackled!" So there... I'm not that original but neither is my experience some crazy outlier.

It seems like the special technique aspects of the the bread are thus. First it's got a high water to flour ratio that allows it to develop without kneading if left alone for 12-18 hours. The second big trick is that it's cooked in a heated dutch oven. Apparently this simulates somehow a commercial baking oven. Like having hot oven tiles all around and with steam trapped in there as long as the lid is on. Or that's the way I internalized what I read about it. Really if you have the slightest interest in baking, and you have a good heavy dutch oven, you should try this at least once! If I wasn't headed towards pumpenickel, I might just concede that I'll probably never make better bread than this and happily stay here. Oh, and get a new bread knife. That old cheap knife that was perfectly ok on soft bread could not stand up to the perfect loaf as Charles so rightly pointed out.

I feel a little bad for the Cuban loaf. Really if I hadn't made the other bread, I would have been pretty happy with how it turned out for my first loaf made without any fat. The pictures were in the prior post... very pretty dark brown blossom. Can't believe I forgot to take a picture of the No-Knead. And it was all gone pretty fast so no leftovers to photograph either. I guess I'll have to do it again, if not for photos then just to prove that I can.