Tuesday's Top Pick

My Bread by Jim Lahey, amazon.com

So for this week's top pick I'm actually not posting something from Etsy! I know, I know! What is the world coming to if I'm not constantly trolling Etsy for the next big thing? ;)

Now I have to be honest, I don't own this book. Yet. It is on my list of books that I am hoping to be able to purchase for myself next month. But I did get a great recipe that is from this book via the New York Times (see it here) featuring bread that doesn't require any kneading and I tried it out today.

I was pretty skeptical with the whole making bread without kneading thing. Wait, let me back up a second and let you know why I was looking up bread recipes that require no kneading. Reason #1 is because I like to be lazy and cut corners if I truly can and reason #2 is because my bread maker committed suicide by jumping off the kitchen counter mid-knead the last time I used it. I don't know exactly how it happened but my bread maker was mixing away and somehow in the process wiggled itself close enough to the edge of the kitchen counter and fell, breaking in pieces. It was a sad day. And hence the no knead bread.

So I made the bread last night, let it rise and baked it this morning. And overall, I was pretty impressed and the only complaint I have is that it didn't rise quite as much as I would have liked, but that may have been to the way I handled the bread and not necessarily the recipe. And I do think that this is a bread I would like to make every week. I may play around with the recipe and make more of a honey wheat bread and if I do I'll let you know how it goes!

-Sara