I love bread. Like, really love it. A lot. It's one of the things I have to eat in moderation now that I'm doing this whole Weight Watchers thing, but I do still get to eat it and that makes me happy.
Bryan has been baking his own bread since January and honestly, it's so delicious that if we weren't trying to lose weight we'd probably just stop buying bread at the store altogether. The original recipe he used was the infamous New York Times one for no-knead yeast bread, and it always turns out really well. We started experimenting and changing things up, eventually using the basic recipe with half whole wheat flour, and trying our hand at sourdough and rye breads.
One of goals has been to get slightly lighter, higher loaves, so we abandoned the no-knead technique and started using longer rise times, letting it rise in a warmer place, and even kneading longer. We discovered the set of dough hooks that came with my fancy pants KitchenAid hand mixer, and that seemed to work, but nothing was quite achieving the results we were looking for.
Last weekend we discovered the concept of baking bread in the slow-cooker, and I am pretty sure it's changed our lives forever. Seriously. It takes about two to three times as long to do it, but the humid environment of the slow-cooker products a loaf that is both crusty without breaking teeth AND soft and chewy on the inside. On Friday I even let the loaf do it's post-punch down second rise in the slow-cooker on the warming cycle and that worked out even better. We basically decided that we're going to keep making it this way from now on, which is sort of awesome because it's really easy. Plus, we can tag team: Bryan makes the dough, and I "bake" it.
Looks like I'm going to have to start working out to offset all this bread baking...
Well, damn.
That is adorable - you guys are so domestic. :) Awwww.
ReplyDelete