The following is a repeat of a previously published post. Enjoy!
I ventured out in the snow and ice on Christmas Eve to buy the fixings for a lovely Christmas dinner. I was thinking salmon with a nice big salad. (My husband drives our only snow-worthy vehicle to work, and I have to wait until he gets home to do any driving.)
Unfortunately, both the grocery stores I went to were closed, closed, closed!
I had a few moments of sheer and utter panic.
What am I going to serve? Is it too late to fake a stroke and cancel Christmas dinner?
By the time I was home, I had a plan in mind. Sure, it wasn’t going to be the elegant meal I had first envisioned, but to quote the usually meaningless platitude –everything was going to be okay.
I had most of the ingredients for a delicious chicken and black bean soup, and I would make bread from scratch to gussy up the meal. (I did have to steal half an onion from the next-door-neighbors for whom I am currently — ahem, cat-sitting. (ie : pantry raiding.)
Luckily, I have a delicious recipe for bread that takes less than an hour from thought to fruition. It’s an adaptation of a recipe from Amy Dacyczyn’s The Complete Tightwad Gazette.
Katy and Amy’s One-Hour Bread
3-4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 Tablespoons dry yeast
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 Tablespoon salt
2 cups hot water (120-130 degrees)
2-4 Tablespoons of melted butter
1 Tablespoon sesame seeds or poppy seeds, (I had neither, and used corn meal.)
Mix 3 cups of the white flour and 1 cup whole wheat flour with the yeast, salt and sugar. Pour in the hot water. and stir together until thoroughly mixed. Stir in the remainder of the flour until the dough is no longer sticky.
Knead until the bread is smooth and elastic. (I use a big bowl that I can knead in so as not to make a big mess.)
Place the dough in a buttered/greased bowl for 15 minutes in a warm spot, and cover with a damp linen, (not shaggy) tea towel.
Punch down. Divide into two pieces and shape into two round loaves. (I sprinkle a small amount of cornmeal on the pan before setting them down.) Score an “X” shape on the tops of both loaves. Brush butter over the loaves and sprinkle with seeds/cornmeal.
Place bread in a cold oven at 400 degrees, with an oven-safe dish below partially filled with hot water.
Bake 40-45 minutes until the bread is a golden brown color.
Serve warm.
There you have it. Bread, fresh from the oven in less than an hour. And it makes your house smell fabulous.
I would have been happy to eat salmon, but the soup was actually perfect. A relaxing meal towards the end of a not so relaxing day.
And believe you, me — there was no food waste!
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
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Same thing placed on a heated pizza stone and baked at 425…delicious!
This sounds nearly identical to the recipe for simple bread featured in the Mother Earth News magazine this past winter…except theirs is no knead so even non bread bakers like me can make it.
biscuits are a great addition to any meal, and take about 20 minutes start to finish. i’m so lazy i tend to stick to quick breads!
Umm, sounds wonderful. You were very creative in the face of a stressful situation. Way to go!
I use this recipe about once every two week and LOVE it. Only thing I do different is add some spices to dough like rosemary, garlic, oregano, and/or basil depending on what I plan to serve with it. Very yummy!
Is it a dense bread?
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