Friday, October 2, 2009

Completed: No-Knead Stecca; Enjoyed: Beet-Arugula-Goat Cheese Sandwich on Homemade Bread

Thursday dinner:
Butternut squash soup and fresh bread. I used water instead of stock for the soup and I think that is why it tasted a bit bland to me. I'm not sure because my taste buds were deadened by all the salt on the bread.

The no-knead stecca was completed around 6pm yesterday evening. Everyone gathered around to gaze at it before we tore into one (of four). The crust was oil-saturated, having had a good dousing before baking, and salty. Almost too salty in places. And crisp. It was very good, but perfect? Perfectly delicious, but I may not have stretched the dough as carefully as I should have, because three of my four stick-loaves were quite flat in the middle. Or did it not rise enough? Did the oil prevent it? -- who knows, but I will happily carry on with this tasty experiment. Those flattened sticks were not ideal for sandwich bread, but we ate them and saved the fullest for
Friday lunch:

From the Lahey book, a sandwich of marinated beets and onions, with arugula and fresh goat cheese, on stecca. It was a truly great sandwich.

I will be starting my next batch of stecca forthwith. For the purposes of evaluating the no-knead process, I would have preferred to start with the basic bread-in-a-pot boule, but I'm still sorting out the pot. The stecca only requires a baking sheet.

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