No-Knead Bread with Rosemary

Mark Bittman's no-knead bread is even more amazing when fresh rosemary is added to the dough just before baking. Try it with butter and coarse-cut Seville marmalade. It will astound your taste buds.

Sunday Brunch

Today, I made Sunday Brunch, which is a favorite of mine.

The Menu:

Freshly squeezed orange juice: Breville makes an awesome citrus press.

Banana walnut muffins: From Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything cookbook. Next time, I'm making blueberry muffins instead. These were good but not stunningly good.  

Homefries: Made from red and yellow potatoes from the farmers market. I parboiled the potatoes the night before, refrigerated them, and then cut them into smaller pieces and pan fried the potatoes in two tablespoons of olive oil and two tablespoons of butter. Awesome.

Scrambled Eggs: Made with marscapone cheese.

Toast: Mark Bittman's no-knead bread toasted up and brushed with butter.

Fruit Salad: Made with cantaloupe, honey dew melon, grapes, apples, and blueberries.

Yeasted Coffee Cake

I just made Mark Bittman's yeasted coffee cake. Late last night, I decided to make this for breakfast this morning. Since I had no raisins on hand, I used dried apricots and crystallized ginger instead. The ginger is a must! It would be interesting to make this next time with ginger and raisins while omitting the apricots. The dough rose overnight and this morning, the kitchen smelled like a B&B. It's a yummy coffee cake. The recipe is from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.

Mark Bittman's No Knead Bread

I have been making bread from the best recipe. Foodie and cooking expert Mark Bittman has adapted a recipe for bread that requires no kneading and only has five ingredients: flour, yeast, salt, water, and olive oil.

What's more, anyone can make this bread in their kitchen with no special equipment. There is nothing quite like fresh homemade bread. The smell permeates goodness in the kitchen, and the taste is simply awesome.

The secret to this bread is the 18 or so hours of rise time. Make the bread dough one day, let it sit overnight and into the next day, and before you know it, you've got awesome fresh bread crisping over perfectly in your oven!

This recipe makes a big enough loaf to freeze some of the bread too. The best thing to do is enjoy fresh bread from your oven. The second best thing is to let the bread cool for at least an hour or two, slice it, and freeze the slices. Because the bread has no preservatives in it, you want to freeze it at the peak of freshness.

When you want to enjoy fresh bread, simply toast the frozen slices in your toaster, and voilà! If your toaster has a defrost function, use it for this.

This bread is tasty on its own; it also goes very well with a high quality butter, such as Kate's Homemade Butter.

Here's the recipe: Recipe: No-Knead Bread

Here's the backstory: The Secret of Great Bread: Let Time Do the Work