Two No-Knead Breads

I decided to bake some bread over the weekend. I’d been thinking about doing so for a while now. Dorothy made a loaf of Apple Cheddar Twist Bread a few days ago and that’s all the motivation I needed.

I wanted to use some of the remaining jalapeños, that we received from our family’s gardens, in a cheddar bread. I also wanted to make a loaf of something that Dorothy would enjoy. These breads were made using two no-knead recipes.

I mixed each dough after dinner and left them, covered, in the kitchen to prove for 12 to 18 hours. After lunch the following day, I poured (yes, poured) the dough onto parchment paper for their second proves.

Upon lowering the dough into the pot, it flowed into the shape formed by the parchment paper ‘cradles’ and, of course, held that shape throughout the bake. The jalapeños on top ‘slid’ a bit when I lowered that dough into the pot (see above).

This was my first time using the jalapeño cheddar recipe, any jalapeño cheddar recipe, for that matter. I sliced two jalapeños to incorporate into the dough and a purple jalapeño for the top. This recipe made a VERY wet dough.

The plain dough was also very wet, hence the parchment-y shape. This loaf rose better in the oven than the jalapeño cheddar loaf did. I tried to brush the excess flour off, but most of it stuck pretty well to the sticky dough.

I later discovered that the recipe I used was a different version of the Jim Lahey recipe that I have used before. There may have been some discrepancies between the recipes due to one being converted to metric measurements.

One side of the loaf was ‘puckered’ and relatively smooth and, to me, resembled a puffy pita. The other side had a beautifully cracked crust, as expected. I think the difference between the sides was due to the parchment paper being slightly off-center in the pot, thus covering the smoother side a bit more.

As I waited between steps, I sat at the kitchen table doing various things. Chief among which was staring back at our fruit bowl full of tomatoes and thinking these loaves of bread would go great with some of Dorothy’s homemade tomato soup.

Dorothy had the same idea. A little while after the breads were done, Dorothy came into the kitchen and said she thought about making more soup. She didn’t need my encouragement, but I offered it anyway. We had soup and bread that night and again the next day.

While not impressive rise-wise, the jalapeño cheddar loaf made great bread sticks and mug squeegees, as I’m sure the other one would have as well.

Jalapeño cheddar bread, you haven’t seen the last of me. Nor I you.