socks: November 2006 Archives

Turkey Day's over and we survived two dinners. Whew . . . delicious food, great company, good time to be had by all. Today Hubby and I are chilling out, just taking it easy and watching Firefly. We thought about going to the movies, but there's no good movies to be seen and the only one that looks remotely interesting is at Arundel Mills Mall (The Queen), which will be packed to the gills with shoppers looking for a bargain. Umm . . . no thanks.

My third attempt with No Knead Bread finally turned out terrific. The key was to reduce the amount of liquid to 1 1/2 cups to start; you can add more if the kitchen is dry. The other key, it seems, is to use as fresh yeast you can get. The yeast I used previously was Fleischmann Rapid Rise bread machine yeast and I've had it quite a while. I think I'm going to have to toss it. Sorry about the picture being a bit out of focus. See how "holey" it is? That's how it's supposed to be, and very light as well. The 2nd attempt bread was quite heavy. It's been tossed into the trash - too salty and dense.

Here are 3 pictures taken throughout the process. In the first photo, the dough is very bubbly and "wet", after an overnight rise in the spare bedroom. That's how the dough is supposed to look like. Also, at the bottom it's not supposed to be runny with quite a bit of liquid. If it is, you've got a problem, buddy. You'll be dealing with very, very sticky dough.

See the middle? That's after it's been folded and left to rest before being reshaped into a ball for 2 hours rise. And the final photo - look how delicious it is. There's a reason why the recipe says to put the bread in seam-side up you get that artisan bread look.

We used most of the rest of the bread leftover that we bought back home for French toast (delicious, I might add; later on I'm going to try using egg to get sweet bread - egg-based bread such as challah is great for French toast). There's only a couple slices left to munch on, so I'm going to have to mix up another batch later today.

Back to knitting . . . need to get that 2nd pair of Wildefoote sock finished off as we watch the Firefly videos that we borrowed last night from J and C . . .