Cranberry pistachio bread

Hey, none of that unless you brought enough for everyone. :-)

It didn't survive the evening.

Would the recipe suffice?

Bear Bibeault wrote:It didn't survive the evening.

Would the recipe suffice?

That would be great! Fair warning... I'm likely to swap almonds in for the pistachios.

I'll have to see if I can schedule some time in the kitchen to get this made before the masses descend on our house for the holiday. If not Thanksgiving, then definitely by Christmas.

For this bread, I used the basic recipe for no-knead refrigerator bread outline here, with a few modifications:

Add a tablespoon of sugar to the dough recipe.

Before forming the loaf for baking, stretch the dough out to a long oblong, add the cranberries and nuts of your choosing, roll it up, and then form the loaf.

Dress the top of the loaf with turbinado sugar after slashing.

I bake at 500F on a pizza stone

I use a proble thermometer* and cook by temp rather than by time. I pull the bread at 200F.

* To me, the probe thermometer is one of the most important tools in a kitchen. Cooking by temp rather than by time, and without the need to pull things out of the oven to test with an instant read thermometer, is a major key to success.

Bear Bibeault wrote:
* To me, the probe thermometer is one of the most important tools in a kitchen. Cooking by temp rather than by time, and without the need to pull things out of the oven to test with an instant read thermometer, is a major key to success.

Can you comment on the accuracy of this particular model?

The instant read thermometers I've tried (admittedly cheap ones) have be pretty much useless. I've seen various really expensive ones and I've thought about buying one, hoping that they'd be more accurate, but I just never seem to get around to it. (Should I buy this fancy thermometer or just save time and grief and just rip up a $100 bill?) The model you cite is in my price range. (Actually, it's in the price range of a few people who badger me to tell them something to get me for Christmas, and it's within my guilt tolerance level if it proves to be a dud.)

That is the model I've been using for years and while I've never checked its calibration or anything like that, I've made lots of yummy food with it. (Them actually, I have three.)

What I like best about these it the ability to get stuck into the food at the beginning and monitor the temperature constantly. No constantly opening a hot oven to check temperature. No juggling with hot food. No waiting for "instant read" to not very instantly read.

Edit: with the bread, I do add the probe halfway through cooking so that the bread has firmed up enough to keep the probe in place. But once in place, it's a breeze.

@calibration

My current one never seems to read above 135 degrees, and is very not instant, so anything would be an improvement over that.

(I'm trying to come up with something clever to say, such as "A stopped thermometer is right twice a day," but failing.)

These seem to be pretty accurate as far as I can tell. And certainly reads over 135F!

P.S. One probe is stuck into another Cranberry Pistachio Bread in the oven as I type this (currently at 155F). I had to heat up the oven to roast some turkey legs for my make-ahead gravy for Thursday, so I figured while the oven was hot...

YUM