Below is the first guest post in the Cooking the Books Challenge series. It is from my Dad, also named Chuck Grimmett. It is from a cookbook I got for him last year, Baking with Steel. If you want to join the challenge and post, see the details at the bottom of this post.
Due to the cold rainy weather last weekend, I decided to dig my Pizza Steel out and bake some bread! This marks the first time I tried making bread from the Baking with Steel cookbook.
The recipe calls for the dough to be made at least 24 hours prior to baking, so you need to plan ahead. I started with good bread flour, I chose “King Arthur Flour” and Platinum Superior Baking Yeast by Red Star. I figured if I start with quality ingredients, I cannot blame failure on the materials!
Ingredients: Bread flour, salt, dry active yeast, warm water. (CAG’s note: I don’t publish the entire recipe unless the author has posted it somewhere else online. I don’t want to rip off their work. I’d prefer you buy their books.)
Following the recipe, I measured the flour by weight.
I used my stand mixer equipped with a dough hook. 3 to 4 minutes did the job, just needed to get all the dry clumps out.
My dough was sticky and bubbly, I needed plenty of flour on my board. The recipe says to place the ball seam side up in a floured breadbasket to rest for 2 more hours.. I don’t own one so I placed it on a floured plate.
I coated my pizza peel with semolina and scored the top of the loaf with a razor, launched onto my Dough Joe, then baked for 25 minutes.
It turned out great! It was delicious and lasted in a plastic bag for about a week. I’d definitely make it again.
Join me!
If you want to join me in the Cooking the Books challenge, send your posts to cagrimmett@gmail.com! I’ll guest post them here on Cook Like Chuck. Here are some guidelines:
- Send me a decent photo of the book to use as the featured image
- Send me photos of the meal you cooked
- Write a little bit about the book, why you chose it, and how the meal turned out
- Send me a photo of the recipe
Let’s dust off those cookbooks and put them to use this year.
Cook Like Chuck 
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