Bacon Bread

I bought My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method by Jim Lahey, the god of no-knead bread. It wasn't for me. It was going to a friend. But since it was in my hands I had to read through it first. The book was beautiful. The author's story of how he came to the no-knead method was fascinating and funny at times. There was one master recipe which was explained in detail both with words and pictures. Although all other recipes seem like variations of the master recipe, they were very intriguing and inventive. I almost kept the book for myself.



Before giving the book away, I tried one recipe: Pancetta Bread. Well, you already know from the post title that I didn't make pancetta bread. I made bacon bread.

This was the first time I used bread flour - the higher protein flour (and therefore higher gluten) than all purpose.



This recipe does not kid around with bacon. It calls for 300 grams of it. That's almost 3/4 pounds of bacon. I love it.


I baked half as rolls on baking sheet and the other half in a dutch oven.

The bread came out super delicious. Thin and crisp crust. Chewy, soft and airy texture even the ones I baked on baking sheet. And bacon - so much of it! It would be delicious as grilled cheese but it was all gone before I could do anything - even taking a good shot of the loaf.

The best thing about this is that it's super easy to make. You basically just mix everything together, leave it for a day. Shape and bake.

Oh, one more thing I love about the book is that there was one picture of a bunch of dutch ovens - all of them far from shiny and perfect. They were dirty with burnt mark. Some of them even looked chipped. Yay! I wasn't the only one with ghetto dutch ovens after all!