No Knead Bread with Beer

I've made the original no knead bread many times and I love it. This time I used beer in place of the water and the results were tasty. This bread is great for many reasons, but I love the crisp crust you get on the outside and the tender bites on the inside.

No Knead Beer Bread

3 cups white flour

3/4 teaspoon yeast

1 1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups beer

Place the flour,yeast, and salt in a medium sized bowl and stir. Add the beer to the bowl and stir until flour is incorporated. The dough will look kind of rough but that is okay. Coat the inside of a large bowl with oil. Take the dough, form into a ball, coat with more oil and place in oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise overnight in the refrigerator.

The next day take a piece of parchment paper and add a little flour to it. Turn the dough out onto it. Fold over a few times and then let sit for an hour. 20 minutes before baking turn oven on 450 degrees and place a dutch oven inside to heat up. Once heated, cut the dough with a knife or kitchen shears across the top, and place bread (parchement paper and all) into the dutch oven. Cover with the lid for the first 30 minutes, uncover and bake another 15 minutes or so (bread should be 210 degrees in the middle).

Sticky Buns

Gabe and I are on our own this week and I've been trying to keep things fun to make it easier on both of us. Today we made sticky buns together and enjoyed them while watching cartoons on tv.

Of all the dough recipes I've tried for cinnamon rolls or sticky buns I have to say this is the most fantastic one I've come across. This is the same dough recipe I shared a few weeks ago for the challah bread we made...but here it has been transformed.

You should definitely give this recipe I try. It is so easy and delicious...the only drawback is that it's hard to stop eating them!!! Check out this Steamy Kitchen blog post for an in-depth tutorial on making and assembling these rolls.

Challah Bread

I've made quite a few yeast bread recipes in the past. I probably make pizza dough every other week and I regularly make rolls, pita bread, cinnamon rolls, or a loaf of bread to have around. So, when I stumbled upon this recipe I was thrilled because there is no kneading and much less rise time involved than a typical yeast bread recipe. No Knead bread has been popular for the past year or so, I've seen it everywhere on nearly every blog, but I still hadn't given it a try until I saw this recipe for a Nutella Challah Bread over on the Steamy Kitchen blog. It just looked too good to resist so I whipped up a half batch of her master challah dough recipe in about 5 minutes last night. It is seriously easy...dump, stir, and cover. That was it. I only had to wash a wooden spoon and a couple of measuring cups. I didn't even put the dough in a clean bowl.

This was so easy and it was a big hit with the boys. Gabe loves rolling the bread "snakes," painting the egg wash on, and licking the leftover Nutella off of the spoon. I almost think he could do this recipe alone because it is just that easy. Give it a try...it is worth it. Here are a few other options for this dough and a couple of very similar recipes. The sticky buns look scrumptious!!
No-Knead Nutella and Hazelnut Challah Bread
No-Knead Sticky Pecan Caramel Cinnamon Rolls
Original No-Knead Bread
I'm also reposting the master Challah Bread Recipe just so that it is easy for me to find the next time I want to make it.

Master Challah Bread Recipe
as posted on Steamy Kitchen from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day

Mix the master dough first and place it in the refrigerator overnight. You'll be using about a grapefruit sized piece for one batch of cinnamon rolls or one braided challah bread recipe. Leave the rest in the refrigerator for another use, it will last for days. This amount would make about 4 loaves...I made half of this and it worked perfectly.
1 3/4 cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 tbl instant yeast
1 1/2 tbl kosher salt (1 1/2 tsp table salt)
4 lg eggs, slightly beaten
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
7 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

In a large bowl, mix together the eggs, water, honey, melted butter, yeast and salt. Stir well with a wooden spoon. Add in the flour. Stir until flour is completely incorporated. Cover with plastic wrap and stick it in the refrigerator overnight, or up to 4 days. The longer you leave it in the refrigerator, the better tasting the dough will be.