Dirty Little Secret

So I knew that in writing this blog, my secret would come out. When Tim is working late or nights, I am L-A-Z-Y when it comes to cooking. Tonight I got to be extra lazy since Morrigan was at a sleepover so it was just me, Maggie & Eion. 

We had a combination of cheese, yogurt, strawberries and bread. Yeah, not so much cooking involved. But in my defense, I did make the bread from scratch! Really and truly, it is not as hard as you think. All you need is:

20 oz bread flour (regular will work too)

12 oz water

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon yeast

The flour is in weight. If you don't have one, you really want to get a kitchen scale. But if you must bake today, it is about 4 cups. But I can't recommend enough using weight. 

Microwave the water for about a minute. Add the yeast. Then combine water/yeast with the flour and salt. Use the dough hook on your stand mixer and mix on the second level for 5-7 minutes. If you don't have a stand mixer, you can do this by hand. It is harder but yields the same result.

Then take the dough and work it into a shape that closely resembles a mushroom cap (Tim calls it a squid.) Place in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap (or a towel.) Let rise for an hour. Make a new squid, working out all the air bubbles, and then let it rise for another hour or so. Punch down and place in a dutch oven. I brush olive oil on the top and sprinkle with salt but this isn't strictly necessary.

Bake in a covered dutch oven at 450 for 55 minutes. And then you have:

which will allow you to say you "cooked" dinner, even if you only get that designation on a technicality.

The cost? I used the King Arthur bread flour we had on hand, which at 5 pounds for $4.50 certainly doesn't fall under frugal but seeing as we already had it, was garde manger. Even with the swanky flour, it was only about $1.30 for the loaf. If you were to get a 25 pound bag of flour at Sam's Club for $7.69, your per loaf cost falls to about $0.45. Which is most definitely cheapy-skate!