Kitchen Hack: One-Minute Bread

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Kitchen Hack: One-Minute Bread

Oven-fresh bread is one of life's simple joys. Ciabatta, a crisp-crusted Italian bread with hints of sourdough and loads of crannies longing for butter, is one of the easiest breads to make at home.

Why are we talking about baking bread on Lifehack? Because kitchen hacks aren't just impressive, they often have very tasty results! In this instance, I'm going to show you how to make ciabatta with less than one minute of prep time. How is that possible? Like many great hacks, this one uses simple ingredients and as few steps as possible to get the job done.

You may have heard of "no-knead" bread before. Mark Bittman and many others have promoted their versions of an artisan bread that doesn't require any heavy labor. While those recipes also create delicious results, they involve too many steps to be considered a real hack.

I wanted something very, very simple that delivered great results in 60 seconds of prep time or less. It may take you a few tries to get below the one-minute mark, but I think you'll enjoy the results every time!

For your ciabatta you'll need:

• 4 cups of all-purpose flour
• 2 cups of warm water
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1/4 teaspoon of granulated yeast (or equivalent)

You'll also need a medium-size mixing bowl, a 10×15 cookie sheet or baking stone, a hand towel or plastic wrap, and whatever you'd like to keep your bread from sticking (if you're using a pan, I use flour and corn meal).

Have everything handy? Good. Let's do this!

1. Mix Water & Yeast

Pour the warm water into the medium-size mixing bowl and stir in the yeast with a spoon. No need to be particular, just dump and slosh.

2. Add Flour And Salt

Add flour and salt to your bowl of yeasty water. This, after measuring out the flour, presents another prime opportunity to get flour on your person. This will be regarded by many as a sign of your culinary determination. You'll need such signs because anybody who actually watches you make the bread will think you're one of the laziest bakers in existence.

Sent from my iPod

Carl Sagan on Genius

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Carl Sagan US astronomer & popularizer of astronomy (1934 - 1996)

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal

H. L. Mencken US editor (1880 - 1956)

Few things are more satisfying than seeing your own children have teenagers of their own.

Doug Larson

Dr. Seuss Went to War

 Those were different times.  Click link to see cartoons.

A Catalog of Political Cartoons

 

 

Three Men on a Hike

From my friend Beverly

Three men were hiking through a forest when they came upon a large raging, violent river. Needing to get to the other side, The first man prayed:

'God, please give me the strength to cross the river.'


Poof! .. God gave him big arms and strong legs And he was able to swim Across in about 2 hours, having almost drowned twice.



After witnessing that, the second man prayed: 'God, please give me Strength and the tools to cross the river'


Poof! .. God gave him a rowboat and strong arms And strong legs and he Was able to row across in about an hour After almost capsizing once.


Seeing what happened to the first two men, The third man prayed: 'God,please give me the strength, The tools and the intelligence To cross the river'


Poof! .. He was turned into a woman. She checked the map, Hiked one Hundred yards up stream And walked across the bridge.


'If at first you don't succeed, do it the way your wife told you!' 

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation

Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, 1905 Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 - 1900)

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

French author & moralist (1613 - 1680)

11 Little-Known Grammatical Errors That Will Shock and Horrify You

To my friends and relatives who care about such things.  You know who you are.  Click on the link to see all of them.

Example:

Try and. The correct phrase is "try to." It really does make sense logically -- the trying is part of the action. I don't try and say goodbye and I choke, I try to say goodbye and I choke. (I also try i walk away and I stumble.)

It's a rough day for a journalism major when he learns he was grammatically bested by Macy Gray.

I remember when I learned the try and/try to disparity. I'd just gotten my first job writing professionally, in October of 2003, and I dropped a "try and" bomb in one of the first things I wrote. I was scolded, beat myself up about it for two weeks straight -- and never made the mistake again. 

Bureaucracy Chic

 

 

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Bureaucracy Chic

via Design Crisis by karly on 2/25/10

I know I have been threatening to post images of my new and improved office for a while now and still haven't gotten around to it.  It's just that I still have one empty wall and our resident photographer has her hands full with a 17 pound distractenator named Ike.  In the mean time, I bring you images from offices around the world in part of photographer Jan Banning's series, Bureaucratics

India

China

Liberia

Liberia

Yemen

Russia

Guess Where?  USA

Bolivia

Bolivia

Yemen

So, still no pictures of my office, but I promise these are a million times interesting.  See the complete series here

Related posts:

1. The Antithesis of Cheap Chic
2. Tastes Great, Less Filling
3. We're Not Out of the Woods Yet

 

 

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• Subscribe to Design Crisis using Google Reader
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Clients From Hell: Won't take more than an hour

I discovered this particular blog a few weeks ago, thank you Google News.


Most of the posts seems to come in from web designers, but hey, customers are customers. I spent more time than I should have with an overseas customer trying to recreate a problem they were having. They hadn't applied all of software fixes that were available, they were convinced that they had a unique problem that couldn't have been covered by a previous fix... As it turned out, an existing solution also fixed their problem.  Anyhow, a quote from the Clients From Hell blog.  The writer of this post was given a task that would 'only take an hour.'

“You realize, if I can do this, it’ll take about 12 hours, and no guarrantee I can make it look like a real photo,” I advised them.

“Yes, you can. You have Photoshop!” The art director screamed. Meanwhile, one of the account guys brought my boss over,who corroborated everything I said.

“Listen,” I said, “you have a finished illo, but if you really want me to do this I will, but I can’t have it done before tomorrow, and that’s if I stay all night. your illustration will still look better.”

The art director blew his stack “LOOK—THIS WON’T TAKE MORE THAN TWO HOURS!!” And then he added “I’D DO IT MYSELF IF I KNEW HOW TO USE PHOTOSHOP!!”

Best Tech Guy caller EVER with Leo Laporte

For pure Chutzpah, this is hard to beat.

Lady calls Leo Laporte's Tech Guy Show claiming her WI-FI access has "disappeared", come to find out that she doesn't even have a router!

Tom Brokaw Explains Canada To Americans

Tom Brokaw explains the relationship between Canada and The United States, in a pre-recorded short film that aired on NBC prior to the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on Feb. 14th, 2010.

A N O N Y M O U S = Actions, Not Our Names, Yield Maintenance Of Unity and Service.

If I have seen this before, I didn't remember it.  

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

Charles Mackay

Teaching Grown-ups

That is why God gave us grandchildren.

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, "The Little Prince", 1943 French writer (1900 - 1944)

Word of the Day

Nice quote by Brenda Craig  that I heard from my friend Bronnie today at church.

Yes, I see the many things you do for Me and these are good, but don’t ever let yourself think—doing things for Me—is the same as being with Me. I don’t love you because you “do.” I love you because you are.

Open your heart. Let go of any unworthiness you might feel due to lack of personal time with Me and come close. I am here. Never let busyness rob your intimate moments with Me. Remember, doing is not the same as being—being births doing. I am always waiting with open arms. 

First Senior Morment

Ignore Expiration Dates

"Best by," "Sell by," and all those other labels mean very little.

Some interesting info about something I have always wondered about.  An excerpt from the article.

Not only are expiration dates misleading, but there's no uniformity in their inaccuracy. Some manufacturers prefer the elusive "Best if used by," others opt for the imperative "Use by," and then there are those who litter their goods with the most unhelpful "Sell by" stamps. (I'm happy my bodega owner is clear on when to dump, but what about me?) Such disparities are a consequence of the fact that, with the exception of infant formula and some baby foods, package dates are unregulated by the federal government. And while some states do exercise oversight, there's no standardization. A handful of states, including Massachusetts and West Virginia, and Washington, D.C., require dating of some form for perishable foods. Twenty states insist on dating for milk products, but each has distinct regulations. Milk heading for consumers in Connecticut must bear a "Sell by" date not more than 12 days from the day of pasteurization. Dairies serving Pennsylvania must conform to 14 days.

Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth -  Mary Schmich