Pretty simple, really: mix the bread flour and the water and the yeast and the salt, let it sit overnight. Heat the oven to 450 degrees, put the cast-iron pot in for a half hour to get it nice hot, flour up the dough, toss it in the cast iron. Bake for thirty minutes. Boom, fresh bread.
I assume that I’m going to burn the [EXPLETIVE DELETED] out of it the first time I try it on my own, though.
That … is nothing like any bread recipe I’ve ever encountered before. Could you provide some additional details?
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Mew
Not much else to add, honestly. King Arthur unbleached bread flour, yeast, water, maybe salt. Mix it up. Cover with cloth, leave for a day. Flour it some more to make easy to knead the next day. Cook. My wife worked out the recipe because she wanted to cook bread over an open fire for Pennsic.
I’ll record it all for posterity when I try it on my own.
Eek.
I hope you’re skipping a couple of steps there.
Baking outdoors isn’t hard, but you need the right equipment, a shovel and a Dutch oven will let you do it like a champ. (With a bit of practice.)
Ok, I dug through my books, and I did find some of my grandmother’s chuckwagon recipes for skillet bannock.
Yeast isn’t really recommended for leavening it, though.
If you’re interested, I can write them up for you.
Okay, that makes more sense. Thank you.
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Off to the laboratory! (erm .. kitchen)
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Mew
I imagine that, in true House of Lane fashion, this is the old-timey just-the-basics-yet-effective approach?
agree that this recipe is like none I have ever seen/used.
I’m sure there are as many variants of this technique as there are bread bakers but this is probably the most well known:
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http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread
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I sometimes add a cup of chopped Kalamata olives, or dried cranberries and walnuts to make wonderful breakfast toast.
Sounds like Bannock to me. (What we call bread made in a Dutch oven, not sure if the appellation is regional.)
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Of course, I’m not exactly clear on the point of using a Dutch oven inside an actual oven. The point of the thing is to be able to bake in primitive conditions. If you’re in your kitchen, why not just bake?*
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But if you’re looking to impress your SCA buddies on a campout, I might have some old chuckwagon recipes for baked goods from a Dutch oven laying around. (Depending on how thoroughly my wife has organised** my cookbooks.)
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*cornbread excepted. Pretty much all good cornbread recipes start with “take a well seasoned cast iron skillet…”
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**AFAICT, the major purpose of organisation is to make things hard to find, but in a compact fashion.
Hmm. You’re not using a dutch oven? Heat from the top as well as the bottom seems to be an issue. But otherwise, your recipe is essentially the same as this guy’s:
http://www.thebackyardpioneer.com/2013/03/25/dutch-oven-bread/
Moe: Just remember this; ‘Baking’ is not ‘Cooking’. Baking is chemistry and biology (ie, science), cooking is art.
Sounds like the Sullivan Street Bakery no-knead recipe made famous by the NYT…if so it makes FABULOUS crusty artisan bread. This is my go-to bread recipe when I don’t feel like futzing around.
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As a seasoned bread baker this recipe was so easy that I actually LOL’d the first time I made it.
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BTW- even if you burn it the first time just pull/cut off the burned bits and slather on moar butter.