Easy and Faster No Knead Bread Recipe in a Dutch Oven

No Knead Bread really doesn't take less time to make than good ole hand kneaded loaf bread - kneading bread is not that difficult and certainly a cinch with a Kitchen Aid. No knead bread just became sort of a novelty ever since the recipe from Jim Lahey, for his New York Sullivan Street Bakery, made an appearance on the circuits back in 2006. For awhile there, everybody was talking about it, and, making it.

His takes more than 18 hours to make. Mine doesn't.

And yes... I know that there is certainly something to be said about allowing yeast to ferment over a long time to produce a flavorful bread. This method is just a shorter way to get a wonderful loaf of no knead bread, faster. And trust me. Even if you don't consider yourself to be a bread maker, you can do this - and you don't have to have a fancy pot for it either. It's nice if you have one, but in truth, you can use a plain ole cast iron Dutch oven, or enameled cast iron Dutch oven, or one of those high dollar, fancy French ovens. Any one of those will work.  I used a vintage Corning Ware Visions Dutch oven my grandma gave me this time.

Old Fashioned Yeast Rolls

This is my go to holiday dinner roll recipe, an absolutely perfect dinner roll for any holiday dinner, and, of course, any other day really. I wrote it for my stand mixer but if you don't own one, don't fret! You can still make these rolls with a little bit of extra elbow grease, so I've also included basic instructions for hand kneading in the recipe.

Airy, soft and tender on the inside and nicely browned with the tiniest bit of crunch on the outside, they truly are the perfect holiday roll. It's really a shame that we don't make homemade yeast rolls more often, but mostly they only make an appearance at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner because of the time needed for the two risings. Those 30 minute quick rolls are nice as a fill in, but they are really more like a biscuit than a roll to me because you really do need that extra long rise for the yeast to develop. They are so worth the extra time though, and especially for these two special meals, and aside from the rising time, so easy to make.

I am soooooo grieving my sweets.

And I have so many to share with y'all too! Most southern style sweets these days have shortcuts like using boxed cake mixes so they are just super easy breezy to make and, well, they are downright tasty ya gotta admit. But... we'll get back to those after Easter, promise.

But... do you know that I near about also gave up bread for Lent???!!!???? Can you imagine?

What was I thinking? Not doing sweets and desserts has been difficult. Very hard. I miss my sweets!

But if I had to give up bread too at the same time?? Ayiyiyi... I love the Lord, I do .. but I would be SO miserable and you know what they say.

If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!


Anyway, I had a taste for some of my homemade yeast rolls so I whipped up a batch of them. Now yes, I have posted about these before, but I tell ya, they are worth a repost. I can't tell you how many recipes I tried and adapted and tried and adapated before I finally came to this one that I consider the perfect-for-me French roll.

If you arrived here off of a web search I apologize for givin' ya a repost and yet another link to click through, but forgive me cuz if you're looking for a French roll, this is the recipe for you! They really aren't a lot of trouble and they are sooooooo good, like a little mini French bread pistolette roll - those of you from the south know exactly what I'm talkin' about! The rest of y'all can just call them French rolls and that'll be just fine. Make 'em smaller (or don't!) for a great roll for dinner, or just do the larger dozen for sandwich rolls.

These are delicious just plain with a slather of Land O'Lakes pure butter on 'em, they're great for any kind of deli meat, they wrap like pure heaven around some of those leftover boulettes...


...and they are especially perfect to make up some stuffed pistolettes (y'all knew that recipe was coming up didn't ya??!).

However you wanna eat 'em, I sure hope you give 'em a try!!

A light wheat bread, using whole wheat and all purpose flour, wheat germ and a touch of honey, and made with the Kitchen Aid.

Honey Wheat Bread

Time for another bread! Since my forced unemployment, thanks to Hurricane Katrina and this economic tsunami on the heels of her, I have been fortunate to be able to make loads of homemade bread. I guess that is one advantage of being an unemployed career woman now stay at home housewife with no little ones up under my feet all day. I have loads of time to play around in the kitchen. Maybe not so good on my waistline...)

Now, I love making bread. I love the process. Putting it together. Feeding the yeast. Watching the dough come together. Watching it rise. And I really love the smell of it baking. Oh do I love the smell of it baking! And frankly while it takes a bit of the hands-on work away which many people enjoy, the Kitchen Aid sure makes an easy job of it and is certainly less stressful on these older hands.

Sooooo I admit it ... I've gotten a bit spoiled by having homemade bread around. In fact it's truly to the point that I just don't care much for store bought bread anymore, so much so that I'll actually skip a sandwich if I don't have homemade bread on hand. I'm just gettin' rotten like that.

Amish White Bread

I know that it's a bit of a contradiction in terms to put the words Amish and KitchenAid together, but this is an Amish bread recipe I found from a clipping that I adapted to use my KitchenAid stand mixer.

I love using my bread machine and it's handy for sure, but frankly using a KitchenAid stand mixer really makes the process of bread making so much more simple and the result is two large loaves instead of just one small one. Of course if you don't own a stand mixer you can certainly still make this by hand - with a little more elbow grease.

Whole Wheat Bread

So, I decided to give another whole wheat bread recipe a try. This time I used a 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread recipe at the King Arthur Flour website.

As you see, I had a much better crown this time. Thankfully, this recipe gave the recommended pan dimensions, so I dug into the deep reaches of my pan cabinet and found my old air bake loaf pan that is 9 x 5 inch - as opposed to the pans I recently bought that are 10 x 5 inch. Definitely made a difference I think!