No Yeast Bread

Yeast. It’s a thing that causes bread dough to rise. There are other things that can cause bread to rise, other than yeast. Like sourdough starters, which I have used and it was good! See here for more.

But what if you have no yeast and no sourdough starter, what do you do? Can you do anything? What if you have flour, water, salt, you know the basic stuff of bread? And no yeast?

What then do you do? What can you do?

Aha, I say! You’re in luck, out of yeast, and in flour, salt, sugar and baking powder AND here at Sloword!

You poor, lucky thing!

Genesis

First, We need to understand why we’re here in the first place.

No, not here at SloWord! We know why we’re here! We like the colour purple, and the long-winded essays and quirky travelogues and some excellent poetry! Yes! It is excellent!

Also, links to some of the best plays ever written in the west end, of my basement. There’s just one, actually, but it’s the greatest one I’ve written!

Anyway, after that shameless plug, let’s answer the question.

We’re here, because we need to use up all that buttermilk we got when we baked scones last week. And we have flour, but no yeast we can trust and we were away for 6 weeks tramping through 4 (four) states of the DUSA. (I leave you to figure out what the D stands for.)

The Solution

So there we have it. The problem is a surfeit of buttermilk and whatever is the opposite of surfeit of trustworthy yeast.

We set to work, ancient Macbook Pro circa 2009 on our lap, the heat from the overworked power supply because of the extra RAM chips we inserted in a fit of techie folly,burning our thigh, as we searched that wond’rous thing called the interweb.

The Chrome browser don’t work too good no more, with many fervent appeals for an upgrade. However, we cannot upgrade, because it also needs a OS upgrade and we’ve reached the end of the possible OS upgrades. And our last upgrade was fraught, with trepidation, as it were, as recounted here.

A very techie problem! Now, if grampa wasn’t a curmudgeonly techie, he’d have bought a new one. But no! Grampa also be cheapskate, so there he is boring you with his techie cheapskatiness when what you want is that damn recipe!

Eh, yeah, that no yeast bread.

It’s bread. Or cake. Made without yeast. Opinion in the household is divided over whether it is bread or cake. The title says bread. And Mary, of Mary’s Nest, says it is bread.

Hence, ergo, therefore and thus, we are calling it bread. When you make it, and look at the batter, dough or whatchamacallit and the finished product, do write in and tell us what you think!

The Recipe

Dry Ingredients

• 2 and 1/4 cups (250g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 Tablespoon (12g) granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Semi-dry Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter

Wet Ingredients

• 1 and 1/2 cup cold buttermilk
• 3 large eggs

Other things

You will need an oven, preheated to 350F, a mixing bowl or two, a fork, spoon, a couple of hands, and a 9 x 5 pan. Remember to grease that pan….

Preparation

• Use the big mixing bowl.
• Place the sifting thingy over the bowl.
• Pour all the dry ingredients into the sifting thingy.
• Sift. It helps aerate and fluff up the bread (or cake).
• Now, in the smaller bowl, mix the buttermilk and eggs.
• Read the recipe again and sigh, deeply, because it calls for melted butter, cooled down to room temperature.
• Shrug resignedly.
• Put chunks of butter in a small pan, melt, and stare are it, willing it to cool down quickly.
• Whisk it up a bit.
• Pour out the wet mix into the dry mix.
• Mix well. (Yes, the two mixes now mixed up in the larger bowl).
• Now take that spatula and pour it out into the loaf pan.
• Did you remember to grease the loaf pan? Oh good!

The Baking is the easiest part

• Yeah, that’s a good song and true to quite an extent. The Waiting is the Hardest Part.
• Not in the case of baking though.
• For in this case, and especially in the case of the Banana Bread, you shove the loaf pan in the oven and watch an episode of something, while it does its thing.
• Remember to place the loaf pan in the middle rack of the oven.
• Set timer for 50 minutes.
• At around the 47.84675 minute mark, check that toothpick (or knife, keep it simple and cheap and environmentally responsible – KISCER)

The Final Product

Mine came out a bit greasy, like the Cheese and Parsley Bread. Something, I will look at in future editions of these breads.

It rose well. Was soft and a tad salty. Not bad for a first attempt.

What do you think?