To Be Settled

I finally started baking bread.

I have been eager to bake bread for years now… and my lack of willingness to do so hasn’t come from laziness or disinterest, but because I have not been in one place long enough to care about dough. Sounds silly, but the art of these practices are intentional and require presence… and I have been rushing around for the last fifteen years. Internally and externally, unsettled.

Symbolically, I feel it is quite sweet that my first loaves have come from the old yellow oven I adore in what I know is the first home I’ve lived in, in my adult life. This is something I must declare… I have lived in a house before, but it was no home. I have lived in an apartment before, but was distracted. Now we live in a home: roofs and walls of peace and cheer, adoration and teamwork, engagement and respect. Now, I can bake bread.

My mom makes this no knead loaf from the internet (yet adapted to perfection), and just like how recipes used to be, she shared it with me via crinkled pen edited paper… simple instruction, four ingredients, no story, no lengthy speech.

This week we made two plain, and one cinnamon loaf, which is absolutely perfect with butter and a healthy dusting of coconut sugar. A decadent alternative to the cinnamon sugar toast we all grew up loving!

All rise, no knead bread

 3 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp. pink Himalayan sea salt (or coarse salt)
1 tsp active dry yeast (check ingredients when purchasing some of these have stuff you don't need in them)
1.5 cups filtered water at room temp (heat in microwave 1 min, then check for room temp) 

Cinnamon loaf: add 2.5 tsp. cinnamon and combine with dry ingredients above

Combine flour, salt, yeast, in a large glass bowl. Pour water over and mix well with a wooden spoon until a good dough forms. Cover and rise in a non-drafty, non-cool spot for 12-18 hours (I’ve been making mine before bed and leaving overnight).

Pre-heat oven to 450. Add cast iron dutch oven with lid to pre-heat. Flour hands well and sprinkle flour over dough. Remove gently from bowl and form dough into a ball. Place on apartment paper.

With oven mitts, remove heated dutch oven (when oven is ready) and lower dough carefully into the dutch oven. Cover with lid and place it in the oven.

Bake 20 minutes - it should be light brown and not quite done looking.

Remove lid and bake another 10 minutes until perfectly golden brown and nicely done - just how it should look.

Remove and let cool on a rack.

Plain loaf preferred toppings: butter, this jam, thin slices of manchego cheese.

I’ve been prepping these at night before bed and baking fresh in the mornings!

Instagram video linked here, blue striped shirt from my video, here.