Follow our 14 day no-knead Artisan bread project

 I've been hearing and reading about 2 new popular methods of making bread.  One is called the No Knead method and the other is called 5 minute artisan.  I even found a copy of the 5 minute artisan book at a yard sale for just $1.

Anyway,  even though the mixing seems simple,  other parts seem complicated.  

One drawback for me is that the 5 minute book recipes call for unbleached flour, which is hard to find in my small town and expensive if it is found.

The other part I did not like is that the oven is supposed to be pre-heated for 30 minutes at a very high temp.  That seems rather energy wasteful to me.

Well,  I have been doing some online research on this easy to mix up bread and have watched several videos on Roku where the cooks make this bread.

Seems the unbleached flour and long pre-heating are not necessarily required.  

Nina and I picked out one of the simplest recipes and mixed it up before lunch today.  

We used 

3 cups of water

1 1/2 T yeast

1 1/2 T salt

1 C whole wheat flour

5 1/2 C bread flour   - thats it,  no sugar or oil of any kind in these recipes. 

So it is thriftier and lower calorie than most bread recipes.

the actual pages from the book - click on them to enlarge if you want to read the book's details.  

Just stir up the ingredients,  the dough was thicker than I expected it to be.

 Cover loosely and let set at room temperature for 2 hours.  

Ours actually sat out for 3 hours because we went to some thrift stores and forgot.

Then it goes in the fridge and just stays there for up to 14 days.

When you want bread,  you break off a lump and form your loaf,  Then let it rise for 45 minutes and bake.

If you want to see the first loaf,  I plan to bake one tomorrow.  

This batch is supposed to make 4  1 pound loaves.  

I may use one lump for pizza and some for buns as the 14 days go on.  

Anyone make this kind of bread?  Any advice?

Quiet packet for little ones

Nina showed me a tutorial for this little art packet a few months ago.  In my current mode,  I cut it out about 3 weeks ago and finally got it sewed up this week.  

It has a lot of pieces and lots of instructions, but it actually went to together simply with no problems.  

here is the tutorial from a very big blog named U-Create

I used fabric from my stash while the creator of this tutorial used 4 fat quarters.

Yes,  I had the little hand buttons and hand print fabric, not sure where either of them came from.  

All the way open

the tutorial puts colored pencils in the 3rd panel and she also shows where she added an elastic pocket for little toys instead.  Since this packet is for a young boy,  I did the pocket with some Hot Wheels in them.  

The center packet calls for chalkboard fabric.  

Nope, I had never heard of it before and found out that Joanns Fabrics sells it.  I got a small piece on Etsy.  

Behind the chalk board is a pocket to insert a tablet.  

I thought one of those little half-size coloring books might fit instead of a tablet. The ones we have are about half an inch too long.

So I am thinking that when I make more,  I will increase the length by 1 inch.  

The only problem I had with the tutorial is that it does not say to round off the corners of the crayon flap.  It is very clear in the pictures but I like word instructions.  If you have any sewing experience,  I think you could make this project.