Roasted Red Peppers on Homemade Bread: Easy You Say?

Yup, I do say easy. We haven't bought bread since I found the wildly popular no-knead bread formula and with locally grown red peppers so cheap in the grocery store it'd be a crime not to roast them.

So, in the picture is my bag of a dozen roasted red peppers and some fresh oat bread. We've ordered oat flour and other goodies from Barry Farm Foods in Ohio. Hubby Bill first discovered them when looking for rye flakes and wheat flakes as alternatives to oatmeal.

I've been alternating oat bread with rye bread using their flours. The special flours seem expensive until you compare the price to buying bread in the grocery.

The basic formula I use for the bread is:

• 2 cups bread flour
• 2 cups oat flour, rye flour, or whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup rolled oats, rye flakes, or wheat flakes
• 2 Tbl. brown sugar or molasses
• 1 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 envelope of rapid rise yeast
• Optionally, add a flavoring like caraway seeds to the rye, sunflower seeds to the whole wheat, etc.
  
• 2 1/4 cups water

Procedure:

1. Mix the dry ingredients (including sugar if using) in a large bowl
2. Stir in the water (with the molasses stirred into it if using)
3. Cover and let rise approximately 8 hours, give or take a few hours
4. Stir down, cover and let rise again for 2 hours, give or take an hour
5. 30 minutes before you plan to cook the bread, preheat a covered pot for baking the bread in a 450°F oven.
6. Lightly oil the hot pot and flop the batter into it.
7. Bake 30 minutes, covered, at 450°F
8. Remove the cover, lower the oven temperature to 440°F and bake an additional 20 minutes.
9. Remove the bread from the pot and cool on a rack.

Voilà! Bread.

For the roasted red peppers:

1. Preheat the oven broiler to high and move a rack to the top-most position. Keep the oven door ajar to make the broiler element stay on.
   
2. Halve and remove the seeds and white membranes from the peppers.
3. Place, open side down on a foil lined cookie sheet and flatten with the palm of your hand.
4. Broil the peppers 10-16 minutes until the skins are black. Don't panic. You indeed do want almost all of the skin to be black and brittle.
5. Remove from the oven and let the peppers steam in their own heat by bunching the foil.
6. When cool enough to handle, slough the skins off the peppers.

Voilà! Roasted red peppers.

See? Easy peasy. The bread measurements and rising times need not be precise. The peppers will look ugly when they come out of the oven. They are supposed to. You can't lose.