Month of Savings - Day 29

Bake Bread. I do not know about your area, but the price of bread healthy varieties or not has skyrocketed. I have a bread machine which I love, but I wanted to make more bread by hand. Since I had some money left from my yard sale savings, I decided to buy Kneadlessly Simple: Fabulous, Fuss-Free, No-Knead Breads from Amazon. It arrived Friday, and I immediately picked out a recipe to try. My first choice was the Easy Oat Bread. I mixed the dry ingredients with the wet ones in a large bowl, which went into the fridge for about 10 hours. It looked like this went it went in the fridge.

Step two was to remove the bowl from the fridge and set on the counter for 12-18 hours. I went with about 15 since it had increased in size dramatically. Here is the dough after rising. (A bad picture, but it did rise quite a bit.)

Next I gave the dough a good stir, greased two pans, sprinkled oats in the bottom of each, divided the dough in half and spread it out in the pans. I topped it off with a few more oats and covered each pan with greased/oiled plastic wrap. I left it to rise for 2 hours after which it looked like this.

I put the loaves in a pre-heated oven. My one change from the book's directions was the baking time. I only had to bake it half the time that was recommended in the book. I think it turned out very pretty.

Dh agreed that it tasted very good, and he would eat a sandwich on it. This is a huge accomplishment as he hated all of the bread machine bread recipes I had tried. It sliced wonderfully with our Rada Cutlery bread knife. I am anxious to try more recipes from the book.

I bought a 25 pound bag of bread flour and 2 pounds of yeast from Sam's on our last shopping trip. The bulk yeast is much cheaper and makes bread baking affordable. I was most pleased with the fact that there really was no kneading required, but the bread turned out great with a nice texture. Even after just one recipe, I recommend this book. The instructions are easy to follow and many call for whole wheat flour or other whole grain add ins. There is also a section with some gluten free recipes.