which_chick | (no subject)

So. I'm trying out that NYT no-knead bread thing. Sometimes I think that the primary area of success for the NYT food writers is that they can get me to try asstastic recipes even when I've had previous experience with their asstastic recipes.

The recipe is 1 5/8 cup of water, 3 cups flour, 1/4 teaspoon of "instant" yeast, 1&1/4 teaspoons of salt, let rise an obscene amount of time (like eighteen hours in a happy, seventy-degree environment), fold over a couple of times, let rise as a boule for another two hours on a well-floured towel, then tip the dough into a preheated coverable heavy-material pot thing, put the lid on right quick, and tuck same into oven at 450 for thirty minutes. Take the lid off and cook another fifteen minutes to half an hour. It's kind of involved, but doable, and the author makes claims like absotively the bestest bread ever on the whole entire planet so what the hell.

Hope Triumphant
Experience Ignored

Yep. That'd be the bunny. I'm using a covered dutch oven thing (heavy cast iron, needed to be cleaned of rust and re-seasoned after I rescued it from grandma's kitchen pantry) for the coverable heavy-material pot thing. All parts of it are oven-safe and it's of a gauge that will do the trick as far as holding an appropriate amount of heat.

NOTE TO SELF FOR TOMORROW: Move oven shelf for the baking part of this project!! BEFORE preheating the oven to 450, I mean.

The dough seems a bit fucking salty to my taste, but what the hell do I know. Probably the NYT guy knows better than me, right? I mean, fuck, am I a writer for the NYT food section? No. I am not. I fix leaky faucets and paint trim and (frequently unsuccessfully) troubleshoot furnaces for a living. I am not an Iron Chef. I don't cook for a living. The NYT food writers, they are the authority and I, I am the recipient of their wisdom.

I also don't have the "instant" yeast so I just used the regular kind. I proofed it in some of the water ahead of time, so I'm hoping that will work okay. The rising is supposed to take place in a 70-degree environment. That's simply not going to happen because my damn house isn't equipped with magic climate-control. It's between fifty-five and sixty when I get up in the morning and it's like that all day when I'm at work, barring special climate control efforts. We'll see what may be done on the temperature front, but that will probably also fall short of the NYT's requirements. I'm still (unrealistically, I know) expecting proper results from the recipe.

I'm hoping that nobody reminds me of the time I tried to make sables from the NYT recipe for same. They sucked ass. This time will be different. Better. It's the NYT. Their food writing has to be good. It has to!