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Comment by dan-robertson | Hacker News Reader

Do you make your own bread and stock and pasta?

I do. Bread is easy and not lot of active work: make the dough the night before, bake in the morning. About 15 minutes labor. Stock: make a batch once a month and if necessary supplement with store bought (you can find stock with almost no salt and no sugar). Pasta I make only for special occasions due to the labor involved and it's trivial to find pasta that has 2 ingredients.

Do you mind posting some recipes or ideas for types of bread that do not need sugar? Most of the simple recipes I have found that are not sourdough or flatbread require a bit of sugar for the yeast, though not sure how much sugar the yeast consumes.

No need for sugar, just let it rest more; it will still rise, only more slowly.

Combine 400g flour (bread flour is better but AP works) with 300g of tap water, 4g of salt, a 2g of yeast (I use instant but I don't think it matters). Mix until a shaggy mass forms. Cover and let it rest overnight (no more than 12 hours). The next morning, preheat a Dutch oven at 450F for 60 minutes. While the oven heats up, stretch and fold the dough a few times, let it rest 15 minutes, shape into a boule, let it rest (I use a banaton) for 45 minutes. Score, bake in the Dutch over with the lid on for 30 min. Remove the lid and bake another 20 min until the color of your choice. Careful the Dutch over is rip-roaring hot.

What I like about this is it takes 5 minutes to make the dough the night before and then 2 hours after I wake up I can have fresh hot bread with just about 10 minutes of active time (fold dough, rest, make boule, rest, put in oven, wait, remove lid, wait, done).

Thanks, this worked well for me, too at about sea level and about 60 degrees in my home. I was wary because of the cook time - I usually only need 18 minutes for a French loaf at that temperature. I did get more rise than expected during baking so my shallow Dutch oven cover smooshed it a bit but I have a deeper Dutch oven I can try next time.

I use a pretty deep dutch over, and it's really the key to getting a nice crumb. Since home ovens aren't steam ovens, it helps to use a small (but big enough) chamber to let the loaf steam for the first half of the bake. I've also seen people use an "inverted" dutch oven or buy a bespoke cloche for the purpose.

I do make my own bread. Sourdough, it's excellent.

Pasta is an exception I allow to my rule, though I eat it probably only once a month now.

In general, it's a very good rule to stick to. This way you are in control and what you're eating at all times.

Better than Bouillon seems fine health-wise to me (box stock is a rip-off - you're just paying for the water).

Boxed dried pasta also isn't inherently unhealthy.

Clearly GP's rule is a little extreme :)

Holy crap no. Take a look at the amount of sodium in Better than Bouillon. Way more than any other type of stock like product. You can get the rip-off box stock with no sodium added in all three flavors.

I think you misunderstand how I use stock. I use a teaspoon or two of BtB for an entire dish to help build a sauce or otherwise season. So I am using it for its salt content entirely - as in, I salt the dish less because I account for that.

It's 30% the recommended salt in a single teaspoon. That's like a big pinch of kosher salt. So really, it's like 3-5% per serving because I get 6-8 servings out of my dishes. right.

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