This morning I baked another loaf of cheesy bread to take to a co-worker who is at home recovering from surgery after an accident. I actually have no idea how the loaf tasted, since I took her the whole loaf and didn't taste it beforehand. But I used the opportunity to take some pictures along the way to show you how the bread develops from start to finish.
In the first picture below (click on any of the pictures to see a larger version), the photo on the left side shows the bread dough immediately after I mixed it together. The only ingredients are flour, Asiago cheese, yeast, black pepper, salt, and water. I just stirred the ingredients together with a rubber spatula until the dough came together in a ball. I covered the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and left it on the kitchen counter overnight. Sixteen hours later, the dough had risen into the soft bubbly mass pictured on the right.
After the first rise, I used a dough scraper to get the dough out of the bowl and I shaped the dough into a ball. I put the ball on a piece of oiled parchment paper inside a skillet (this technique is taken from the Cook's Illustrated method for almost no-knead bread; Lahey directs you to put the dough on a dishtowel instead). The dough deflated during this step and the picture on the left below shows what it looked like when I first put it on the parchment paper. As you can see, quite a few cubes of Asiago were stuck on the outside. After two hours of rising at room temperature, the dough had increased quite a bit in size. The picture on the right shows what the dough looked like right before I dropped it into a preheated dutch oven to bake.
So, after half an hour of baking in a covered dutch oven, and another 30 minutes of baking with the lid off, I got the golden brown crusty loaf with bubbled cheese that you see below. It smelled just heavenly while it was baking, and the lovely aroma lingered in our kitchen for hours.
Recipe: "Pane con Formaggio" from My Bread: the Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method by Jim Lahey.
Previous Post: "We're Crackers for Cheesy Bread! Pane con Formaggio," January 12, 2010.
In the first picture below (click on any of the pictures to see a larger version), the photo on the left side shows the bread dough immediately after I mixed it together. The only ingredients are flour, Asiago cheese, yeast, black pepper, salt, and water. I just stirred the ingredients together with a rubber spatula until the dough came together in a ball. I covered the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and left it on the kitchen counter overnight. Sixteen hours later, the dough had risen into the soft bubbly mass pictured on the right.
After the first rise, I used a dough scraper to get the dough out of the bowl and I shaped the dough into a ball. I put the ball on a piece of oiled parchment paper inside a skillet (this technique is taken from the Cook's Illustrated method for almost no-knead bread; Lahey directs you to put the dough on a dishtowel instead). The dough deflated during this step and the picture on the left below shows what it looked like when I first put it on the parchment paper. As you can see, quite a few cubes of Asiago were stuck on the outside. After two hours of rising at room temperature, the dough had increased quite a bit in size. The picture on the right shows what the dough looked like right before I dropped it into a preheated dutch oven to bake.
So, after half an hour of baking in a covered dutch oven, and another 30 minutes of baking with the lid off, I got the golden brown crusty loaf with bubbled cheese that you see below. It smelled just heavenly while it was baking, and the lovely aroma lingered in our kitchen for hours.
Recipe: "Pane con Formaggio" from My Bread: the Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method by Jim Lahey.Previous Post: "We're Crackers for Cheesy Bread! Pane con Formaggio," January 12, 2010.
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Harry