Bread for a slow weekend
Bread recipes hide their time in the rises, so the notes count it: how many proofs, how long each one is in the recipe, and how much of the day you are tied to the kitchen versus just waiting. The first two need no yeast at all. The last one goes in the fridge on Saturday night and into hot fat on Sunday morning.
Skillet Cornbread
1 of 8
No yeast and no rise. Flour, cornmeal, baking powder, an egg and a cup of milk or buttermilk, mixed in a few strokes and poured into a skillet that was preheated with bacon drippings until smoking. That hot fat is the crust. Twenty-five to thirty minutes in the oven.
Piadina (Thin Italian Flatbread)
2 of 8
Flour, salt, oil and water, no yeast, rested thirty minutes and rolled into four nine-inch rounds. Each one is pricked with a fork and cooked in a dry cast iron pan for under two minutes a side. Fold and fill. About an hour, most of it the rest.
Pizza Dough
3 of 8
Two cups of flour, a cup of water, yeast and a pinch of salt, risen only twenty to thirty minutes in a warm spot. The recipe spends most of its words on the bake: check the underside at ten minutes and move the sheet up or down the oven depending on its colour. Make one or two the first time and adjust.
Khachapuri (Georgian Cheese Bread)
4 of 8
An egg dough with two rises of about thirty minutes each, rolled into two sheets the size of the baking tray with feta, smoked provolone, Parmesan and three eggs sealed between them. Baked ten minutes, brushed with butter, then baked until golden. It reheats well and the recipe says it is fine cold.
Flammekueche (Bacon and Onion Flatbread)
5 of 8
A thirty-minute yeast starter with beer and milk, a dough worked in the food processor, two rises, then rolled thin and spread with creme fraiche, slow-cooked onion, nutmeg and bacon matchsticks. In an oven as hot as it goes it bakes in minutes. Blackened edges are, per the recipe, the correct result.
Hot Cross Buns
6 of 8
A yeast sponge that froths for fifteen minutes, then a spiced currant dough that rises an hour, is shaped into twelve, crossed with a knife and rises thirty minutes more. Fifteen minutes to bake. The glaze is golden syrup, flour and a little oil brushed on hot.
Welsh Fruit Bread (Bara Brith)
7 of 8
Bara brith: a buttered, spiced yeast dough rises ninety minutes, gets twelve ounces of dried fruit kneaded in, then proves again in the loaf tin for forty. An hour in the oven, foil over the top for the second half. Brushed with honey and sliced thin with butter. A full afternoon, almost all of it waiting.
Lángos (Hungarian Fried Flatbread)
8 of 8
Flour, yeast, four eggs and yogurt kneaded into a dough that goes into the fridge overnight. Next day, lumps are stretched by hand, never rolled, into thin discs with a thicker rim and fried in two inches of lard for thirty seconds a side. If a disc does not puff, the recipe says the fat is too cool.
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