by A.J. Coltrane

This is another attempt at a “same day rustic bread”. The last batch didn’t get mixed adequately. The recipe is the same as the last time, with some modifications — this recipe uses 1-1/4 tsp salt to 3c flour. (The salt was increased to .42 tsp per cup from .375 per cup.) This was also a 3 cup recipe rather than a one cup recipe, so the crust had time to get much darker — the color it’s supposed to be. There were also some time and handling differences.

Because the dough was underworked on the last try I also decided to incorporate more folding, (only one during fold the last attempt) and the dough got an extra hour of time. I had originally intended for 8 hours with folds every two hours, but other stuff came up:

9 am – Mix dough

11 am – fold (stretch and fold over each direction one time)

1 pm – fold (x2)

2 pm – fold, wait 15 minutes, form into a ball as in the Lahey/Bittman recipe and place seam side down in a floured bowl. (I’m still sticking with trying the bowl, at some point I’ll have to try the towel as in the Lahey/Bittman recipe.)

4 pm -bake as the Lahey/Bittman recipe calls for.

The result:

I think I may have to start slashing these loaves — the bread has cooperated exactly one time getting nice ears and rising like I think it’s supposed to (out of four attempts). Either that, or I need to make sure the seams wind up on top, which is tricky with a dough this wet (of course, I *could* use a towel like the recipe calls for…).

The overall result was better than last time — it may be as a that as a dough with only flour, water, yeast, and salt, that there is a limit to how good a bread can be without an overnight rise or a preferment. I’m going to assume there’s still plenty of room between this dough and whatever that limit is.. The Lahey/Bittman recipe blows it away. It still made a nice turkey melt though:

by A.J. Coltrane

This bread came about as an attempt at a rustic bread that’s “longer- rise- without- having- to- wait- overnight”. It’s rooted in the Lahey-Bittman No Knead Bread, as well as Peter Reinhart’s Pain a l’Ancienne in his book The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.

Both the Lahey and Reinhart breads call for an overnight rise — Lahey’s rise happens on the counter, and Reinhart’s happens in the refrigerator. I wanted to try something similar, shooting for about 6 hours of rising time on the counter. Using Reinhart’s recipe as a jumping off point, here’s where I wound up:

The table above assumes 1-1/3c water to 3c flour for the Lahey bread — the amount of water he uses in his book, “My Bread”. (I’m now using this as the “standard” amount of water for the Lahey/Bittman bread.)

I had started with 1/4 tsp salt — I didn’t want the salt getting in the way of the yeast too much. (It’s a small amount of yeast in these recipes.) I changed course and went with 3/8 tsp because salt helps with gluten structure — I was hoping for a rustic loaf with good volume and large interior holes. (Thank you Jeffrey Hamelman, whose book “Bread – A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes” needs its own “Recommended Cookbook” post.)

I think it’s an interesting point really:  When I think I want volume my first thought would normally be “don’t use too much salt, it’ll slow down the yeast and the rise won’t be as high”, when in reality I’m better served using a more “normal” amount of salt and being patient with the yeast — the end result should be a better product.

…back to the recipe — I used the Lahey/Bittman technique as a template:  I chose to go with a 4 hour rise, followed by folding the dough and letting it rest 15 minutes, then a final 2 hour rise in a very lightly oiled and floured bowl.

For baking, the Lahey/Bittman recipe calls for a temperature of 450F in a dutch oven. Reinhart calls for 475F, on a baking stone that has been preheatead to 500F, for 20-25 minutes total. Reinhart also mists the oven with water to create steam. I chose to go with 450F using the dutch oven, 10 minutes covered and 15  minutes uncovered. The final temperature of the bread was 207F, almost right on the target of 205F.

As for the final result:

And:

What happened: 

The bread tasted good and had a good crust. Neither was exceptional, though it worked great for sopping up marina sauce — the flavors of the sauce and bread married very well together.

The finished bread had a fairly light complexion:  It was a small loaf (1cup flour), so it didn’t get much uncovered cooking time.

The large irregular holes are a symtom of insufficient mixing or folding. As part of the postmortem I read (in Hamelman’s book) that high hydration doughs need to be folded more times than lower hydration doughs. This dough only got one fold. (Which worked fine for the Lahey bread, but in that case the enzymes had 20 hours to work on the gluten.) Also, the mixer had trouble with the tiny quantity of flour in the bowl, more dragging the dough around rather than kneading.

Next up, an eight hour process, folding every two hours.