Last week was the annual Scone Marathon, wherein I make up to a half dozen batches of scones in various flavors, most of which go to the office Holiday Potluck - for a couple hours of time and relatively minimal ingredients, I get to eat lots of other people's food. Wh00t! But in the process of getting ready to cook, I took a clean-up tour through the Cabinet of Spicy Doom. Hasn't been sorted through in years, has tea, baking stuff, spices -- you name it. Found a 10+ year old tin of condensed milk that - well, it hadn't burst the tin *yet*. Eck. But I also found a packet of yeast, of indeterminate age, that I'd gotten in vague idea of experimenting with bread. Finally got around to playing with it today, only to find the yeast quite dead (I'm really not surprised). Unwilling to give up, I tracked down a no-yeast recipe; often called quick breads or soda bread, they sub baking powder, baking soda, and a touch of vinegar. I suspect buttermilk would work, but I don't keep any in the house. White vinegar I have a ton of. All the recipes I found were near identical - one used only powder - and so I record it so I know where to start when messing with this one. 4 cups flour 1 tbsp sugar 1/2 tbsp baking powder 1/2 tbsp baking soda 1½ cups water 2 tsp vinegar (cider or white)
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix dry ingredients together, mix wet ingredients together. mix wet into dry. Turn onto floured surface and knead for a couple minutes. Put loaf onto baking surface (cookie sheet, pizza stone, etc.) and bake 40 min. Remove from oven, glaze top with melted or softened butter, set on rack to cool.
So far, the bread's just out of the oven. I found the dough very dry, and it affected the rise of the loaf - we'll just say it looks very rustic :D Crust feels pretty hard, but I want to let it set for a few minutes to let the temperature even out before I even broach it, in case there's some last minute baking going on in the center. *shrug* We'll see.
When I get around to yeast bread, the recipe I want to try is here: http://www.io.com/~sjohn/bread.htm
accomplished