We need more no-knead bread!

Hamby Home(in)stead was without bread on Saturday.  We went into town that morning but I wasn't keen to pick up any groceries, so we opted to make-do with what was in the panty. 

My original thought was to make a cheat-version of focaccia for Sunday breakfast.  However, I often stay up late and at midnight remembered the wonderful no-knead bread method. 

Of course, it was a very late start but on reading through the notes, I saw the blogger had success with a shorter initial rise - so I dumped all the ingredients into a bowl (increasing the yeast to 1 teaspoon due to the shorter rise and cool night).  I tucked a small polar fleece blanket around the bowl and went to bed.

On Sunday morning, I set the dough into a saucepan at 8:00am. (The saucepan is smaller/taller than the bowl I'd usually use).

At 9:30am I started preheating the oven (and my Aldi cast iron pot) to 230 degrees.  The dough was lifted into the pot at 9:55am and baked for 30 mins with the lid on - then for about 15 minutes uncovered.

It was brilliant! We had slices with our bacon and egg brunch and then more slices with jam afterwards.

The recipe made a small cob loaf, which didn't last long.  Vaughan was quite adamant - "we need more no-knead bread"! I agreed and set a double quantity of ingredients into a bowl, just before we went out at 1:30pm.

The second batch of dough used 4 cups of white flour and 2 of wholemeal spelt flour that was lurking in the pantry. I used two teaspoons of yeast and a splash more water.

At around 10:00pm, I moved the dough into a tall pot to rise overnight.  This is my adaptation of the method because I particularly wanted the bread to be ready for Vaughan's lunchbox, before he left for school - and had no intention of getting up at 5:00am to achieve that aim!!

I was up at 6:30am this morning to preheat my Aldi pot and oven to 230 degrees.  By 7:00am the bread was ready to go into the oven - and fortunately the dough just fit into the pot!  I took the lid off at 7:30am and baked for a further 20 minutes, given the height of the loaf.  It looked so beautiful when it came out of the oven and has been given a score of 10.5 out of 10 by our youngest bread critic!

It occurs to me that I could possibly put my Aldi pot into the oven before going to bed and use the oven's timer to auto-start the pre-heating - then I could just get up at my usual 7:00am to bake the dough!  Hah!  Some serious googling for the oven instructions might be necessary!