I made two of these. This one cooked after I had eaten the previous one. These are experiments. A while back I saw a video, I don't know how I found it, of someone making no-knead bread - it was sourdough bread. I don't think I wrote anything down. But I got enough out of it that I wanted to try something like this. I wasn't ready to fire up the big oven yet. So I've been wondering if I could possibly make this on the stovetop for just a small serving. When I went back to find the recipe I had first seen, there was a subscription wall. So I had to find a different sourdough recipe. I found Mark Finley I think it was, his video. So I got wondering if I could try this on a small scale - oh I forgot – I had already started my dough and it had been sitting out all afternoon, and I had just put it in the fridge to sit overnight. But this guy Finley, said the dough should stay at room temperature - I think that's what he said. So I hauled mine out of the fridge... One of the things about making no-knead bread with a good crust is that it needs to be baked at very high temperature for a while. And that is not going to be able to be done on the stovetop. The other thing with no-knead and sourdough is that you use very little yeast to begin with - the yeast grows as it rises over a long period of time. My little bread experiment here is again made without a real recipe. I used eight heaping teaspoons, (cutlery teaspoons), of all purpose white flour. A pinch of salt, a bigger pinch of sugar, and a pinch of dry active yeast. These dry ingredients get mixed together in just a little bowl /container, or whatever. In a separate cup I put some almost boiling water. Then, teaspoon-by-teaspoon, I add it a little at a time to the dry. Stir a little and keep adding. In this case I used 18 ,(cutlery) teaspoons of hot water, hoping that the water would not be too hot just by having gone through that action. I know the feel of when there's enough water in. And you can't mix it completely - you just have to mix it through very quickly and then go for more water. If you go to thoroughly it's too hard to add more if it needs more. So by feel I knew I had done adding water. Then I covered the whole thing with the tinfoil tent and let it sit. I peeked occasionally to see what was going on. I'm not sure if I was allowed to or not. I gave it a few stirs every once in a while. This morning I cut the batter/dough in half. Since I did not have bran flakes or cornmeal, I used oatmeal. I sprinkle the oatmeal flakes onto a piece of tinfoil. Scoop this 1/2 of batter onto the tinfoil with the oatmeal. Flatten it out a little bit. Set this into an aluminum pie plate, cover it with an aluminum pie plate. Set this contraption inside the cast-iron frying pan, which has been pre-heating on the stove top, cover the whole thing with the pan cover and let it cook, or shall we say bake. This will not brown in these baking conditions. With the first muffin though I turned it over halfway through, so the peak of that one actually did brown. But the next incarnation of batter did not brown at all. I didn't turn it over I just let it 'bake' as it was. I think I sliced in half with a long serrated knife shortly after I took it off the heat. I took photos of it the way it looked when it came out. The way it looked once sliced, and the final picture, with cheddar cheese on top. I like the inside texture - it's got air holes - yay! It just lacks a good crust. Well actually it has the crust, but it's not a brown crust. And it's a thinnish bread - it's about a half an inch thick.
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