No-Knead English Muffin Bread

Are you a "yeast-a-phobic" cook? A Kitchen Parade reader shares her recipe for English Muffin Bread to banish all your fears.

COMPLIMENTS!
"I absolutely love this recipe and have made it four or five times." ~ Jasmine
"I made it with half whole wheat flour and half white flour. YUM!! ... Nice texture and flavor." ~ Shannon
"... so freakin good that I plan to make this weekly. ... final product is so tender and moist." ~ Mary
"An artisan loaf at the store will run you between $3-$4, but you can make it at home for less than a dollar." ~ Budget Bytes

---

Crestwood reader Carole Splater has a message for what she calls "yeast-a-phobic" cooks. “It’s almost a sin that my English Muffin Bread is so easy. We love it, our guests love it, everybody loves it.”

And I love it too, ever since Carole e-mailed her recipe last fall.

No bread machine, no stand mixer, no kneading. Just a few ingredients, 15 minutes of attention and two hours later, hot delicious bread emerges from the oven. The crust is great, the crumb is perfect. If this recipe can’t resolve someone’s insecurities about yeast bread, well, their loss. Really, there is simply no need, ahem, to worry about this no-knead bread.

CAROLE's TIPS Frugal bread bakers buy yeast at wholesale clubs. It comes in a packet so large it might be characterized as a life-time supply but stored in the freezer, yeast keeps indefinitely. When a recipe calls for a packet of yeast, just use 2-1/4 teaspoons. The bread should be sliced and eaten within 30 minutes of the oven. Alternatively, let the bread cool, then cut into thick slices and wrap in one or more foil packets. Just before serving, reheat the slices right in the foil at 350F for 12 -15 minutes. Freeze remaining packets for serving another day.

Kitchen Parade is written by second-generation food columnist Alanna Kellogg and features fresh, seasonal dishes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences. Quick Suppers are Kitchen Parade favorites and feature recipes easy on the budget, the clock, the waistline and the dishwasher. Do you have a favorite recipe that other Kitchen Parade readers might like? Just send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com. How to print a Kitchen Parade recipe. Never miss a recipe! If you like this recipe, sign up for a free e-mail subscription. If you like Kitchen Parade, you're sure to like my food blog about vegetable recipes, too, A Veggie Venture. Follow Kitchen Parade on Facebook!

READER RECIPE:
ENGLISH MUFFIN BREAD

No knead, no worry

Hands-on time: 15 minutes
Time to table: 2 hours
Serves 8

(be sure to read Later Notes, below for ingredient updates)
• 1 packet yeast (2-1/4 teaspoons)
• 1 cup all-purpose flour, fluffed to aerate before measuring or 125g
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon table salt
• 1-1/4 cup warm (not hot) tap water

• 1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour, fluffed to aerate before measuring or 220g
• Yellow cornmeal

MIX In a large bowl, combine the yeast, 1 cup flour, sugar, salt and water. With a hand-held mixer, beat on medium speed for 3 minutes. (Time yourself, 3 minutes takes forever with such an easy job.) Add the remaining 1 3/4 cups flour and mix until fully blended. If the dough gets so thick it wants to "climb" the beaters, stop, remove the beaters, and use a wooden spoon to finish blending. The dough will be thick and heavy.

LET RISE Grease a 1-1/2 or 2-quart casserole dish and dust with cornmeal. Add dough and arrange evenly, it will be thick and heavy but don't worry, this needn’t be perfect. Sprinkle top with cornmeal. Cover with a light towel and let rise in a warm place for 30 – 60 minutes, until bread roughly doubles in size.

BAKE Some time midway, heat oven to 400F/100C. Remove the towel and bake for 30 – 45 minutes until top is golden. Turn onto a cooling rack.

NUTRITION ESTIMATE Per Slice, assumes 8: 170 Calories; 0g Tot Fat; 0g Sat Fat; 36g Carb; 1g Fiber; 149mg Sodium; 0mg Cholesterol; 5g Protein. WEIGHT WATCHERS POINTS WW Old Points 3 & WW PointsPlus 4

---

LATER NOTES

CONVERTING the RECIPE to WHOLE GRAIN FLOUR Thanks to the encouragement of Shannon (a Kitchen Parade reader, see the comments below), I made the No-Knead English Muffin Bread using 1 cup freshly ground whole wheat flour and 1-3/4 cup of King Arthur's 100% white whole wheat flour. The bread was very good but a little 'earthy' for my taste. Next time, I'll try 1 cup whole wheat flour and 1-3/4 cup all-purpose flour. I'll also add a tablespoon or two of molasses to deepen the color and add a bit of sweetness that seems needed for whole-grain breads. If anyone has more ideas, I would love to know, since converting bread recipes to whole grain flours should be a definite goal for all of us.

HOW WARM IS A 'WARM PLACE' FOR BREAD DOUGH TO RISE? Like many people, I keep my house a cool 65 - 67F during the winter. Bread dough rises verrrry slowly at this temperature. So I've taken to using a small, portable space heater near the bowl. I've learned that it must be set at 75F, not 70F, for a quick rise. Good to know!

USE MORE YEAST Carole writes that she now uses a whole tablespoon of yeast to substitute for a packet. She continues, "It makes an even lighter product. I bake LOTS of bread over time and have found this to be very successful!"

---

THE LEGENDARY NO-KNEAD BREAD

Two years ago, the New York Times published a recipe for No-Knead Bread. Sure, the bread needed no kneading, but more than that, the technique yielded a bread with a crackling-crisp crust and a light, airy interior crumb. This would be worth kneading! Within a couple of weeks, food bloggers and bread bakers everywhere were baking loaves of No-Knead Bread. (Just check Food Blog Search, it's amazing the number of references.) I made it a few times but was unexcited, if only because it took a master clock watcher to figure out when to START the bread some time early the day before, in order to serve hot bread for supper the next night. Plus the dough was wet and sticky, hard to work with, especially for someone perhaps less confident in the kitchen. The flavor was okay, but, well, not worth the trouble. (In fact, Cooks Illustrated tested and retested the recipe, see the January 2008 issue since it's available online only with a paid subscription, and the New York Times just recently published a revision, Speedy No-Knead Bread.)

When Carole wrote to me last fall, she'd not heard about No-Knead Bread! But she'd been making her No-Knead English Muffin Bread for years, perfecting the already-simple recipe. Thank you, Carole, for letting me share your recipe with Kitchen Parade readers, I just know they'll love the ease and convenience!

---

DOING THE MATH ON THE COST of HOMEMADE BREAD

One of the main ideas in how to save money on groceries is to "do the math". Let's do the math on homemade bread.
Carole shared her math for yeast. "Try buying yeast at Sam’s Club or Costco – the cost difference is so phenomenal. Two pounds of yeast costs $3 something (so $.03 per loaf) versus $1.59 for 3/4 ounces (so $.53 per loaf) at the grocery store, the equivalent of $67. I keep yeast in a mayonnaise jar in the freezer; it lasts indefinitely."
But let's go further. At my grocery store today, 5 pounds of brand-name unbleached flour is $2.99 for five pounds so you'll use $.30 of flour, salt is $.46 for 24 ounces, cornmeal is $1.89 for 24 ounces.
Summary: $.03 yeast + $.30 flour + less than a penny for salt + $.05 for cornmeal. Who's buying bread for less than $.40 a loaf or $.05 a serving? Heavens, who buys a bagel for less than that? I think not! Food for thought, indeed.

---

More Easy Bread Recipes

(hover for a description, click a photo for a recipe)

---

Celebration Breads

(hover for a description, click a photo for a recipe)

~ more bread recipes ~

© Copyright 2008, 2015 Kitchen Parade