A Doughy Saga and a Balloon

So various places in blogland have written about their adventures with the No Knead Bread recipe from the NY Times... I ran into some modifications of the famous recipe on the Cooks Illustrated website, who have also made a video podcast for their mods. Well, I don't have a fancy cast iron dutch oven (yet) but I took a stab at it with a little ceramic casserole dish I have. I say "little" because it's about half the size of the one called for in the recipe.

Well, my loaf turned out small and round and totally adorable -- and yummo. It was ridiculously easy and I will do it many more times to perfect it. Since this is theoretically a cooking blog, too, here are a couple of pretty pictures of it. It is by now mostly consumed, but remains adorable. I am exceedingly proud of it.

In other news, I have finished the little lacy hat. It is the one called Bonnie from Kim Hargreaves Heartfelt Collection. I eliminated the slouchiness by leaving out one repeat of the lace pattern. (Doesn't it seem like it should take more than just one out of five repeats to take away slouchiness? I am a bit skeptical that the original as written would be very slouchy.) I did sub the yarn, using Debbie Bliss Merino DK rather than the Rowan Bamboo Soft that it calls for (perhaps the drape of the Bamboo would have provided the slouch?) I also used a slightly smaller needle to get gauge.

Overall, I am very happy with it, since the merino gives it more sproinginess. Since it wouldn't fit over my massive dreads (and I couldn't convince my HLM to model it) I had to use Ms Balloon Head to show it off. Trust me, it looks absurd when it isn't stretched out to display the lace pattern. Hopefully my coworker will like it.