What can I add to my bread recipe?

August 5, 2020 11:44 AM

I love making no knead bread using this easy recipe. Today I added some grated cheddar cheese, and now I’m looking for ideas for other ingredients to add to the dough before baking to provide some more variety—even though the original is delicious on it’s own!
posted by bookmammal to Food & Drink (12 answers total)

Experiment with herbs and spices. I’d think you can build a couple different flavor profiles, as long as you’re not adding too much that will change the consistency. Like Parmesan, garlic powder, sun-dried tomatoes. Or chopped up olives. Or raisins, cinnamon and nutmeg.
posted by Pretty Good Talker at 11:49 AM on August 5, 2020

Seeds are a good addition: sesame, pumpkin, poppy. I do about 1/4 c per loaf.

Dried rosemary (about 2 tsp, maybe more) is also good.

I add 2 tbsp olive oil.

My next goal is to try a cinnamon-raisin recipe, I miss raisin bread.

Sometimes I sub in 1 c of rye flour, so that it's not plain white bread.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 11:53 AM on August 5, 2020

Olives. Caraway seed. Coriander seed. Walnuts. Roasted or dried cherry tomatoes. Pine nuts. Pumpkin seed. Raisins. Parsley, Rosemary, Basil. Poppy seeds. Dark chocolate chips. Roasted garlic. Mild diced chilis.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 11:55 AM on August 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Cranberries. Oreos. Large cubes of cheese (like 1/2 inch at least), Gruyere works great. Feta cheese. Tiny pieces of Habanero pepper. Coarse-ground black pepper. Cheese curds. Little sausages, possibly in combination with cheese. Look, yes, maybe I'm just hungry. Fun-sized snickers bars.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 12:01 PM on August 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

From personal experience playing with no-knead recipes a lot: if you want to try flavoring the water, you're going to need something extremely strong. I did about a dozen experiments using tea instead of plain water and even the tea that tasted way too strong to me never came through in the bread. Adding any sort of dry ingredients should pose no problem, however!

Here are some other thoughts I have on no-kneads!
posted by curious nu at 12:02 PM on August 5, 2020

My next goal is to try a cinnamon-raisin recipe, I miss raisin bread.

I sometimes add 1 tbsp vanilla, 2 tbsp cinnamon (the cheap stuff) for a 3-cup loaf, and it is so, so good. For cinnamon-raisin I'd maybe do a teaspoon of vanilla and then add in.. I dunno.. 1/4 to 1/2 cup raisins? Depends on how well that distributes.
posted by curious nu at 12:11 PM on August 5, 2020

Dice and sautee a small leek in olive oil. Add that with some thyme and oregano. As a bonus the bread will stay fresh longer because of the olive oil. I’m going to start a loaf tonight.
posted by sjswitzer at 1:44 PM on August 5, 2020

Oh, and if you want to be adventurous, you could boil and mash a potato in lieu of part of the flour And use the potato water in your dough.
posted by sjswitzer at 1:47 PM on August 5, 2020

I'm quite partial to adding a handful of chopped green onion and a bit of mashed garlic (roasted or fresh) and topping with poppyseeds.
posted by ananci at 4:32 PM on August 5, 2020

Turmeric (added into the dry flour and use only a bit--I use 3g turmeric in 500g of flour) and caramelized onions (incorporated into the dough before it has had time to rise).

Also you can replace the water in your dough with, say, milk or kefir (you might need to increase the amount to maintain the same hydration level), or other infusions.

Also you can replace regular salt with (non-iodized) other salts for a subtle change. A friend used truffle salt and it imparted a very gentle umami to the loaf.
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 7:35 AM on August 6, 2020

If you can get rye flour, small amounts (5-20% bakers percentage) make the bread much more interesting.

Experiment with very long fermentations in the fridge (after your overnight ferment at room temp) - 1-5 days in the fridge!

My best 'No-knead' recipe is here. Less yeast, a 3 folds, make a huge diff.
Ignore the need for the proofing box in the link above.
posted by lalochezia at 10:00 AM on August 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

Seconding adding rye, but don’t forget to add caraway seeds when you do. A tablespoon is about right.
posted by sjswitzer at 6:24 PM on August 6, 2020