Our Daily Bread

Honestly, I don’t make bread every day. Sometimes I can go a week without making bread.

I have been making Jim Lahey’s No-Knead bread for over 2 years now. We love it and I love how easy it is to make (and eat!), not to mention how inexpensive it is. But one of the main reasons I starting making our bread  is that I made a decision to reduce and work towards eliminating the pre-processed foods that we buy. Bread was an easy place to start.

Over 2 years ago I started making our bread

His recipe calls for all-purpose flour, but I have experimented using a mixture of white and wheat flours. Right now, I find that a 1/2 white and 1/2 wheat mixture works for us. I would like to work more at getting even this recipe a bit more healthy by using whole grain.

Jim Lahey bakes his bread in a cast iron dutch oven. Well, I don’t have one of those for a couple of reasons (I am not saying I will never get one, just not right now). The dutch ovens are very heavy and can be quite expensive. Instead I went to a thrift store and bought a few “once loved” crock pot insert for less than $5 each- one of them even came with a lid, the other I use foil. Those inserts can take the 500F oven, they don’t weight 20lbs and I didn’t break the bank to buy them. So nice.

"Once Loved" Crock pot inserts getting a second lease on life

This recipe makes a nice loaf of bread and even works for pizza dough too. However, I wasn’t too successful at using it for making buns.

Sincerely, Emily

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