Friday, February 19, 2010

No Knead Skillet Pizza


This bread recipe amazes me. I made up my first batch of dough the other day and it literally took me less than 5 minutes to make. Once it's made it just needs to sit for 12-24 hrs to rise, so that is the trade-off for not having to knead the dough. However, one of the recipes we were shown how to make are these skillet pizzas that take about 5 minutes each to make! Very Italian: dough, mozzarella, basil, and tomato. So easy and so tasty! My next test will be to try it with whole wheat flour. I'll let you know how it goes :).

Saturday, February 13, 2010

No Knead Artisan Bread

For Christmas I was given a great gift. A friend paid for me to go to a cooking class called "No Knead Artisan Bread" that just took place this past Monday night. Not only did we learn to make a VERY easy Artisan bread that tastes wonderful, we also learned how to use the bread to make some super yummy recipes that include pizza (in the oven), skillet pizza, bread pudding, and soup (I know it sounds wierd but it's amazing...I made some today!). Not only is making the dough easy, but cooking it is super easy too! I made the boule you see below by baking it in a preheated cast iron pot (also pictured). It was such a fun gift because we got to go together (along with another friend), ate some great food, and learned how to make a fun bread recipe that is very practical and usable. I have really loved learning how to make homemade bread this past year and a half!

No Knead Artisan Bread. So good! It has a weird texture to the crust because you put flour and cornmeal on the dough before you wrap it in a flour-sack cloth to rise. Once it's baked it will just fall right off. Our chef also mentioned you can make it with whole-wheat flour as well. I may give that a try sometime as well.

Nice, soft, yummy bread. Perfect with some olive oil, Parmesan, and freshly ground pepper :).