King Arthur baking Company

Cooking With Christie: Cheater Sourdough

Finder of Lost ThingsLeave a comment

This Week’s Recipe: No-Knead Crusty White Bread

Inspiration: Looking to up my bread game, as I’ve mastered my regular white loaf, I started perusing the King Arthur Baking Co. website. (BTW: This is not an advert; I just find their recipes easier to replicate than some other sites.) In any case, I ran across the No-Knead recipe, which apparently won their 2016 Recipe of the Year award. 

What I love about this recipe: After you make the dough and it goes through its first rise, you stick the dough into the refrigerator! Where you leave it for up to seven days – or – scoop out a chunk and bake yourself a loaf of fresh bread for dinner a couple of times during the week. 

However, the longer you leave it the funkier, light sourdoughy taste it gets! All without needing to invest time in creating a sourdough starter. 

Click here for the recipe.

Okay, I know my loaves aren’t as pretty as they could be, scoring wise, as I’ve yet to invest in a lame (a razor used to score bread).

Christie: I can easily see Miss Marple or Tuppence whipping up this recipe. The smallish loaves are great when you are only baking for a couple of people or want to impress an unexpected supper guest.

Plus, the bread works really well for French Toast the next day!

Cooking With Christie: Pizza!

Finder of Lost ThingsLeave a comment

Inspiration: Recently, my favorite pizza place closed unexpectedly, leaving a wedge-shaped hole in my heart. Since it was one of the few pizzerias I could actually eat at (as it used non-enriched flour), I’ve been missing my bi-weekly pizza runs!

Deep Calming Breath

I’ve tried making pizza dough in the past, and it was…okay. Not bad, just not great either. So I decided to up my pizza game and bought the following book.

King Arthur’s Baking School has all kinds of basic recipes for simple and complicated bakes, accompanied by helpful hints, tricks, and advice.

So, I tried the book’s pizza dough recipe….with a few tweaks. To add some extra flavor, I mixed in dried basil, majorum, and parsley. I also swapped half the all-purpose flour with bread flour to give the dough a bit more chew.

And it turned out beautifully!

Then I discovered the pizza sauce I thought was in the cupboard magically disappeared. (I swear it sprouted legs and wandered off.) Undaunted, I winged it. Using regular spaghetti sauce fortified with tomato paste (to thicken it and make it taste more tomatoey), I added extra herbs, a dash of sugar, and a healthy amount of gochugaru pepper flakes.

Helpful Hint: Make a sauce like this the day before. It will taste oodles better the next day as all the flavors have time to marry together.

Spreading my improvised sauce, I loaded the pizza with veggies and vegan chorizo and baked it….It turned out great! With more practice, it might even become excellent!

Doesn’t it look pretty!

Christie: Honestly? I’m not sure I can see any of Christie’s detectives making this…Save Superintendant Battle who I think would like feeding his family something that requires time to make and a bit of improvisation.