Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year !! :)

Dear Friends,

Hope you all are doing great and enjoying the holiday season to the fullest !! I have been very very busy lately, so disappeared from the blogging world...I didnt check my fellow bloggers' posts nor could post any comment...and sorry for not being able to reply to your precious comments !! They do mean a lot to me. I will reply to you all as soon as I resume blogging. I opened my dashboard after a loong long time now..and was overwhelmed by soo many delicious and mouthwatering dishes !! Specially, the cakes and cookies...yumm !!

My MIL has come here for the first time to visit us and to attend my husband's convocation :) So I will remain very busy till beginning of Feb....wont get the chance to post here as I have lab work 5 days/week...and then most importantly, final prep for my Residency journey going on ... :)

So, I wish you all a very Happy and Prosperous New Year !! See you all in 2010...I will be back with lots of new recipes and will visit all your blogs... :)

Till then, take care everybody...and Happy cooking !! :)

No-Knead bread !!

This is straight from Soma's e-curry.com ... I couldn't wait to make this bread the moment I saw it. Well...how about a no-recipe post for the no-knead bread ?? :P

Ok let's write a short-cut post :P ... please visit Soma's blog for the detailed recipe here for this very easy-to make-bread !! I followed her recipe exactly as she has written but had to make a few changes. I will write them in detail though !! :)

I don't have a 6-8 quart pot, so I used a 4 qt pyrex mixing bowl and covered with aluminum foil. Maybe, thats why the size of the bread was a little smaller.

And I did a BIG mistake...instead of keeping the mix in warm place for 14 hours, I kept it in the fridge overnight only to realize next morning, when I saw the mix hasn't risen at all !! Actually, I was pre-occupied with something the previous night and dint read that part properly !! I thought that it was gone !! Still, I kept the bowl for the whole day , this time in the unheated oven. To my great relief, I found the dough has doubled !! :)

Since, the bowl that I used dint have a oven-proof lid, I covered it with foil. Actually, my husband did this part...covering and taking out the HOT bowl from the oven before putting the dough in. Have to be very careful if you are doing this way.

Another thing that I noticed, the crust was a bit too hard after baking it for 15 mins uncovered. I should have checked it before that but since we were watching a movie while having lunch...I dint get up before the timer beeped !! :P

Next time, I will check after about 10 mins.

It did taste great- apart from the hard crust, rest of the bread turned out well. And the whole thing was over in one evening. We had some with butter...and then tried making bread pizza with rest of the 4 slices :)) (will write about that soon).

Oh another point, my bread didnt crackle as she has described in her post... I kept it in front of my eyes and watched it expectantly while it cooled down... is it because of the hard crust ?? I am not sure.....may be it will next time !! :)

I will be back with other recipes soon. Till then, take care everybody !! :)