"breads" news and stories

The absolutely stunning crust and crumb you see in the photo above is a direct result of Not Martha's highly successful attempt at making the No-Knead Bread that Mark Bittman talked about in the New York Times last week. The bread was, to quote NM, "awesome," with a crunchy crust and an open, chewy interior. In short, it was just how you want homemade bread to turn out and the recipe is simple enough for anyone to try, in no small part because there is a video how-to that accompanies the recipe.

And, since I mentioned that anyone can make it, I should point out that just about everyone already has. The bread recipe has spread like wild-fire through the blogs and probably has in the nonblogging world, as well, considering the fact that it was one of the most popular NYT articles last week. There is even a flickr group dedicated to the bread. I'm not sure if I could track down every blogger who made the recipe, but here are a few who have: Smitten Kitchen, Wednesday Chef, Bake my day , Eat, Lovely scones, Bread, water, salt, oil, Unemployed Chef, and Brownie Points.

Feel free to post a link to your post on the bread in the comments if I didn't catch it.

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I have heard many, many trick for keeping fresh bread fresh. By fresh bread, I mean the baguette or boule or sourdough loaf that you can buy at a good bakery. These loaves should have a crisp crust, a moist and soft interior and a flavor that is unrivaled by anything that comes packed in plastic at the supermarket. The fresh breads tend to go stale in a day if not properly stored. One bakery recommended to me that I store the bread in a paper bag and reheat it in the oven for a few minutes to refresh the crispness of the crust. This has been a fairly reliable method, but if you eat a lot of bread, you'll go through a lot of paper bags.

Recently, I came across these reusable bread bags that are designed to do the same job and keep bread fresh. The bags are made of cotton and can be used in one of three ways, making them more versatile than a plain paper bag. They can be unfolded to support tall loaves, folded down to form a basket for rolls or muffins and the can also be sealed with the magnets hidden inside the lip of the bag, which keeps in heat if you are serving and generally keeps the bread fresher. The bags come in black, white/sand and red.

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Contrary to what you might expect from the name, this bread does not use any orange soda. It is based on soda bread, or Irish soda bread, which is leavened with a combination of buttermilk and baking soda. This use of a chemical leavener allows the bread to be prepared quickly, as opposed to a time-consuming yeast-raised bread. From Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once, this Orange Soda Bread gets its flavor from a generous amount of orange zest that is added to a fairly standard soda bread recipe, but it offers a surprising crunch from the sesame seeds that Haalo included in the dough. The bread is not overly sweet, so it would be best served alongside breakfast or as a snack, perhaps with butter and jam, in the mid-morning.

For variations, you could switch the orange zest with lemon zest and use poppy seeds instead of sesame. Raisins are a typical inclusion in soda breads, so you could add in a small amount of just about any dried fruit, as well.

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We already got some advice on which white breads were the best tasting (although you can always opt for homemade if you want to avoid store-bought entirely) but what about whole grain breads? There are so many different varieties to choose from, it's actually quite a feat to narrow down your criteria to the point where you can compare similar breads. One glance at the shelf in the grocery store shows whole wheat, honey wheat, oat bran, oat nut, multi-grain, 8-grain and dozens of other "whole grain" breads. Rather than trying to work out which might be the best, Food & Wine magazine picked out a few of their favorite whole grain products as a jumping off point, a benchmark that you can work from to find your own favorites. They selected De Cecco Whole wheat pasta, Pepperidge Farm Natural Pepperidge Farm whole wheat bread and Keebler Wheatables.

It's worth noting that the Pepperidge Farm bread did well in the white bread tasting, too, but I would choose Kashi's Tasty Little Crackers over F&W's choice of Wheatables for a whole-grain snack any day.

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The fact that you can buy artisan panini breads - good for making any number of sandwiches - seems a bit odd. After all, the image that one usually associated with the hand-crafted and carefully baked artisan breads is of a small, local baker dedicated to high quality and not some online store. In this case, the store in question is Williams-Sonoma and they're offering sandwich panini rolls from New York's Balthazar Bakery. The breads include (3)ciabatta, (3) potato and caramelized onion rolls, (3)multigrain baps and (4)olive rolls, for a total of 13.

Actually, the idea doesn't seem so odd when you consider that cakes, cookies and other baked goods are shipped across the country all the time, but breads do tend to go stale faster than other baked goods (these stay fresh for only 3 days), so you'll have to get overnight shipping and eat them quickly once they've arrived. The rolls are $29+shipping.

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