More Bread Baking…

And the quest for the perfect “no-knead” loaf continues. If you’ve stumbled upon this site before then you may have noticed that I’m obsessed with making the no-knead bread recipe that was featured in the NY Times about a year and a half ago. If you click on the “Other Yummy Things” category or do a search for Bittman or Lahey you will be able to take a look at some of my other attempts.

For the original article from the Times Click Here .

This post is a two-fer.

I was craving bread as usual and decided to go back to my regular loaf (2 cups whole wheat flour and 1 cup white flour).  It turned out just fine as usual.  But I knew that it could be better.  I wanted a full loaf with a good rise to it.  No more flat-ish loaves.  I wanted something that I could make a decent sized sandwich on.  So I obsessively scoured the multitude of posts about this bread on the internet.  And I found my answer…

GLUTEN FLOUR!

Gluten flour comes from high-protein whole durum wheat that is washed to remove starch.  Then is is dried and ground.  You use it with whole wheat flour or with low gluten flours.

Of course I went out and bought some…

The results were great!  The dough rose a bunch AND the bread turned out fairly full.  For this loaf I used 2 cups Whole Wheat flour, 1 cup White flour, 3 tbsp gluten flour and 2 cups of water.  The more whole wheat flour you use the more water you should add.  The dough was fairly easy to work with and not too wet.

The only problem that I had was that the bread stuck to the bottom of the pot.  That had NEVER happened before.  I waited for everything to cool down and used various knives, forks and spoons to pry the bread loose without damaging it.

Next time… 100% whole wheat!