All of my grandma’s bread recipes have been pretty solid so far. The major exception is Quick French Bread which I haven’t posted yet because I’m struggling with making it a working recipe while retaining the essence of it. It’s just a terrible recipe. The first thing that jumps out about this recipe is the oleo. If you look at the description you can see it’s supposed to be butter but someone tried to make a “healthy” substitution. It also just says “yeast.” Given that there’s no waiting time, I went with instant yeast. The other change I was planning on in advance was the herbs. I think in the spirit of freshly baked herb bread and Vermont, fresh herbs are the move.
Original Recipe
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar or honey
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon oleo
- 1 tablespoon yeast
- 1/2 cup warm water
- 2 1/4 cups flour
- 1/2 small onion, minced
- 1/2 teaspoon dill weed
- 1 teaspoon crushed, dried rosemary
Instructions
Scald milk and dissolve in it sugar or honey, salt and butter. Cool to lukewarm. In large bowl, dissolve yeast in the water. Add the cooled milk mixture, flour, onion and herbs. Stir well. Cover and let rise about 45 minutes (triple bulk). Stir down and beat vigorously. Turn into a greased pan, let rise about 10 minutes then put into a preheated 350 degree oven. Bake about an hour.
Reflections
This recipe appears very simple and part of that is that it doesn’t fully explain the steps. Also the order of a few things bothered me. I added the flour before the milk mixture just to protect the yeast from the heat in case it isn’t actually cooled. Technically water should be before yeast in the ingredient list since it’s mentioned in the instructions first so I made that switch. I changed the onion to a shallot because I do remember how small a small onion was in Eastern Vermont in the 90s and I hate to play into the whole “Everything is bigger in Texas” trope but the onions definitely are. Finally you’ll notice I added a fair amount of flour. When you make this you’ll see what a wet dough it is even with this addition; in the first iteration it was more of a batter than a dough. Way too soft and difficult to work with. This still makes a super soft dough but now it’s got enough structure for sandwiches or what I did with it…grilled cheese croutons for a miso caesar salad.
No Knead Herb Bread Recipe
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup (120 g)milk
- 1 1/2 tablespoons (19 g) sugar or (30 g)honey
- 1 1/2 teaspoon (9 g) salt
- 1 tablespoon (14 g) butter
- 1/2 cup (120 g) warm water
- 1 tablespoon (17 g) instant yeast
- 3 cups (360 g) flour
- 1 shallot, grated
- 2 tablespoons fresh herbs, minced* or 2 teaspoons dried herbs
Instructions
- Scald milk over medium-low heat (just until tiny bubbles start to form around the edge). Reduce heat to lowest setting and add sugar, salt and butter. Stir until butter is almost completely melted and remove from heat to finish melting and cool to lukewarm temperature.
- In a large mixing bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, dissolve yeast in water. Add flour, cooled milk mixture, shallot and herbs. Beat with mixing paddle until well combined. The dough will be loose and wet; you couldn’t knead it if you tried. Remove paddle, cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel and let rise until tripled in bulk (about 45 minutes).
- Using the paddle, beat dough vigorously until thoroughly deflated. Turn into a greased 9×5 loaf pan and cover loosely. Preheat oven to 350 while bread does its second rise (10-15 minutes). Bake for one hour. To test for doneness you can knock on the loaf to make sure it sounds hollow or use an instant read thermometer to check that the internal temperature is at least 190 degrees.
*I used a mix of thyme, rosemary, tarragon and chives. If, like me, you don’t want to get a cutting board dirty to make bread you can use kitchen shears and snip the herbs directly into the bowl.
vtx kitchen 