This was less of an experiment for me and more of one for my daughter. Caidi made white bread with me today. It’s my second time with this recipe and only the 4th time ever that I’ve made a yeast recipe and not had a failure. I credit the Instant Yeast (something my mom introduced me to).
If you’ve never seen his stuff before, there is a guy named Steve who has a YouTube channel (linked below) who covers a lot on how to make no-knead bread. His recipes are very easy to follow and the results are spectacular.
So last night, Caidi approached me to follow-through on my promise that we could make a loaf this weekend. This was around 11:00 P.M. Now that may sound like a bad time to do it, but to be honest, with the recipe we followed, it’s actually not. Steve’s approach to making bread is apparently what all the good baker’s knew for years; you make the dough at night and let it proof, overnight, for at least 8 hours before you bake. More to the point, if you use the Instant Yeast instead of Active Yeast (which is a nightmare for me, most of the time), it will do a fantastic job of making your dough rise up in that 8 hour window. The outside of that window is 24 hours, but I doubt I’d ever be planning far enough in advance for something like that.
Anyway, this recipe was derived from a Betty Crocker classic, so we followed the simple recipe, and Caidi and I had the dough ready for proofing in about 10 minutes. Then we went to bed.
This morning, I got up and checked the dough before I got Caidi. This batch came out just fine.
So after I got the kids up, Caidi and I went to work on the final step of patting out, forming and getting the bed ready to bake. We had it sitting under a towel for it’s second rise.
Caidi gets ready to pat out the dough 
Formed and ready for a second rise
Finally, the dough was ready and we got it in the oven for the duration. And the results?
Fresh from the oven 
Looks great 
Slightly different angle, but looks perfect!
I’d say Caidi’s baking skills are coming along great! We have to wait a bit before we cut this open, but I have no doubt that we’ll enjoy this. I’m attaching a direct link below for the recipe we used, in case you’d like to give it a try.