pasithea

Stacey was watching a cooking show the other day. It was an episode about dutch oven cooking. Ah, the memories.

Anyhow, one of the things he made was sourdough bread. I used to love making sourdough bread but it's work to maintain a sponge and keep it alive and from getting contaminated or too funky. Also, I don't need to bake a loaf of bread every single day.

Anyhow. Instead of a mother dough, he just put 1/4tsp of regular active-dry yeast into the dough and let it sit over night.

I tried this Monday, baked it Tuesday and... there's another one rising right now to bake tomorrow. mmm. Sourdoughy goodness. Good density, good texture, good crust and it takes about 5 minutes of actual effort to make a loaf of bread. It's got to be the easiest bread-making method I've ever tried. Not to mention the fewest ingredients. Just flour, water, salt, a tiny bit of yeast, and some cornmeal to dust over the outside.

Here's the recipe online, though it takes about 2 minutes to memorize because it's really really easy. If you don't happen to have a dutch oven handy, you could probably use ceramic or glass bakeware with a heavy lid in the oven.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_170394,00.html

As for me, I use my dutch oven when we're smoking things and for outdoor cooking so the seasoning added a really excellent note to what was already some pretty darn good bread.

Also, fwiw, I used regular flour rather than bread flour and my results were quite nice. :)