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My last blog post was about the pleasure of baking bread. The recipe I used was from Mother Earth News and had almost no kneading, yet did not have the long rising times of typical no-knead bread recipes.

I promised to post the link to the recipe online if Mother Earth News had it posted (I got my recipe from the paper magazine.) I found it!

Here is the link: Homemade Bread – Truly Easy and Delicious.

The recipe I used is about half way down the page and is called Basic Sandwich Bread Recipe.  I followed the recipe, except that I substituted about 1/2 cup whole wheat flour for 1/2 cup of the unbleached all-purpose flour.   It was an easy, yet satisfying process, even though it is an almost no knead bread recipe.  The bread was delicious and sliced in thin slices that held together well and were perfect for the panini sandwiches that I made.

The recipe is part of an article that has good information on yeast and bread making and several other recipes.  You will likely enjoy the whole article if you are interested in baking bread.

The recipes are by William Rubel, who has written a book called Bread: A Global History which will be released September 2011.   (This is our Amazon link – you can preview the book.)

Mother Earth News also has another article on Baking No Knead Bread – Five Minutes a Day to Fresh Baked Bread.

These recipes (Five Minutes a Day to Fresh Baked Bread) come from the book  Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François.  I have really enjoyed this book.  The recipes are different from the Basic Sandwich Bread Recipe even though they are both no knead or almost no knead bread recipes.  With the Artisian Bread in Five Minutes a Day recipes, you will mix the dough for a long rise, sometimes overnight or many hours.  Most of the recipes call for then storing the dough in the refrigerator to bake a small batch at a time.  Another unusual process with the Artisian Bread book is that most of the recipes call for putting water in a tray in the oven with the bread which causes the bread to “steam cook.”  Very nice, and you will always have fresh bread, but for the first baking you may need a lot of patience, as it will probably be at least the next day before you can actually have finished baked bread to eat.

I hope this gives you a bit of direction on very easy, very delicious bread recipes that you can make without a bread machine.

Enjoy!

Patti

(Links to books and images are in association and by permission of Amazon.com)