by A.J. Coltrane

The first time I tried No Knead Bread I used quite a bit of extra flour on the work surfaces. I was happy with the taste, but less so with the appearance. (Really, I was completely happy with it the first time, almost giddy really, but there’s always room for improvement.) The “first time” bread was somewhat misshapen and seemed to have an excess of flour on the outside. The second time I tried it was more or less the same story — same shape, same rise, and probably more flour than would be desirable on the outside of the finished bread.

 

The Bittman/Lahey No Knead Bread recipe basically breaks down to five steps, I’ll list them, as well as what I tried that was different on the 3rd attempt:

1.  Combine the ingredients in a bowl. Let rise 18 hours.

No changes here. Mix the ingredients with a wet spatula, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and come back the next day. The dough is happy to do its thing.

2.  Remove the dough from the bowl and place on a work surface. Fold the dough onto itself and let rest 15 minutes.

The first two times I used a very generous amount of flour and a cutting board work surface, and the dough still stuck. You might say: “Of course, you dummy, the cutting board has lots of grooves for the dough to grab onto!” (And you’d be right to say so.) During the rise I covered the dough with plastic wrap, which also stuck a little.

On the third try I used a large round (flat) serving platter. I added a tiny amount of cooking spray to the platter and dusted it with a small amount of flour. I covered the dough with an inverted bowl. This worked *much* better, though the dough might have benefited from a little flour on top. The top is eventually flipped to become the bottom, and the flour might help protect it from the heat of the dutch oven.

There’s an important note in here — everytime the dough sticks to something it degasses. Degassing = less open crumb structure and less rise in the finished product. All of my (intentional) adjustments were rooted in the idea of having less stickage happening.

On the first two attempts I used a wet spatula to fold the dough onto itself. On the 3rd try I got my hands wet and used them to fold the dough. Between the relatively no-stick surface and my somewhat no-stick hands it worked a lot better, and the folds were much more pronounced — better all the way around. I think that may be why the 3rd dough had the nice ears and the first two breads only developed a crack along the surface. (Either that, or the final handling was responsible for the ears, OR, it was all luck.)

I also think I may be underselling the importance of the folding in the no-knead method. If the dough is really only being handled two or three times I’d guess each time *really* makes a difference. (Though the dough will taste awesome regardless.)

3.  Shape the dough into a ball and place it seam-side down on a well-floured towel. Let rise two hours.

Use really wet hands. Less dough will stick to them that way.

I ditched the towel idea and went with a medium size serving bowl with straight sides. The idea was that the diameter of the bowl would allow me to invert the bowl directly over the dutch oven and the dough would plop out. To encourage the dough to fall out easily I added a tiny amount of cooking spray and then lightly floured the bowl. The issue that I ran into was that I didn’t spray/flour all the way up the sides of the bowl, so the dough got a little stuck at the very top. Other than that though, I thought this modification worked really well.

4.  Transfer the dough to a preheated dutch oven. (Seam side up.)

My oven is small. I’m thinking that it’s a bad idea to preheat the dutch oven longer than it takes the oven to come up to temperature. The bottom of the dutch oven gets too hot, since it’s relatively close to the bottom of the oven. I’m also of the suspicion that my oven may be running vaguely warmer than it says it is — each time the bread has been done at the very earliest recommended cooking time. (Either that, or it’s the small oven talking again.)

5.  Bake, removing the dutch oven lid partway through.

The crust came out browner on the 3rd try, especially on the bottom of the bread. Reasons for this might include:  The small amount of cooking spray used in handling the dough; the oven and dutch oven both preheating for longer than the first two attempts; or the absence of bench flour protecting the outside of the dough from the heat.

My first guess at the main “brownness” culprit is the preheating that happened on the 3rd attempt — on the first two attempts the dutch oven was placed in the oven and the oven was preheated to 450 degrees, the dough was then immediately put into the dutch oven. On the 3rd attempt the dutch oven was allowed to hang out in the preheated oven for about 10-15 minutes. I think the environment was hotter overall.

I’d like to think that I used such a tiny amount of cooking spray that it didn’t significantly darken the finished bread. If only because it’s easier make the bread that way. More flour on the dough might help too, especially on the bottom.

Variables.

 

The recipe and “first attempt” post is here.

by A.J. Coltrane

Boy, talk about being late to the party! To quote Jim Lahey’s website:

In November of 2006, Lahey’s no-knead method drew the attention of “The Minimalist” columnist Mark Bittman. His articles about it in the New York Times sparked a worldwide home baking revolution.

Or, as Mark Bittman said:

I set up a time to visit Mr. Lahey, and we baked together, and the only bad news is that you cannot put your 4-year-old to work producing bread for you. The method is complicated enough that you would need a very ambitious 8-year-old. But the results are indeed fantastic.

Mr. Lahey’s method is striking on several levels. It requires no kneading. (Repeat: none.) It uses no special ingredients, equipment or techniques. It takes very little effort.

Bittman also says:

The loaf is incredible, a fine-bakery quality, European-style boule that is produced more easily than by any other technique I’ve used, and will blow your mind.

I finally figured I’d give it a try, starting it on Thursday for a Friday dinner. In my opinion, the superlatives that people use about this bread are all true. I was actually kind of shocked at how good it was! It was far and away the best bread I’ve ever made, and that’s damning it with faint praise.

The recipe is here. The Minimalist column is here. I would highly recommend reading the Minimalist column in addition to the recipe. It has some good insights on bread baking in general.

A few notes:

1.  It’s an 18 hour initial rise, then the dough is folded and allowed to rest for 15 minutes, followed by a 2 hour final rise. Allowing time for cooling, the process needs to be started about 21 hours before the bread is ready for serving. So, if dinner will be at 6pm tomorrow night then the dough needs to started at 9pm the night before. In the future I’m just going to use the “Eastern Time Zone” automatic translation that goes on in my head for sports start times.

(The crumb wasn’t really quite *that* white. The color in the last photo is closer to the truth.)

2.  The recipe doesn’t say at what temperature the bread is done, simply “until loaf is beautifully browned”. In my opinion, the “right answer” is to insert an instant read thermometer into the “center of the center of the loaf” (to quote Peter Reinhart). The bread is cooked at 205 degrees. (Or maybe 200 degrees, though I’m currently thinking 205 is “correct”.)

Note that the recipe calls for 30 minutes covered, plus 15-30 minutes uncovered. I found the loaf to be cooked after 15 minutes uncovered, on the very short end of the recommended time.

3.  The NY Times recipe calls for 1-5/8c flour. I need to do some further looking around, but it sounds like 1-1/2c or 1-1/3c is actually correct. In (the newer edition of) How To Cook Everything, Bittman uses a 1:2 water to flour ratio (by volume), which would be 1-1/2c water for the 3c flour in this recipe. For my first loaf I used the more conservative 1-1/3 cups of water, a ratio of 4:9.  (For reference, the pizza dough recipe that I use has a 1:3 ratio of water to flour, and the Ming Tsai hot water dough uses 1:2. I shot for the middle.)

The reality of all of that is, of course, that I should be using weights rather than measures. That’s not happening until I can find the kitchen scale, which is still in a box someplace waiting to be unpacked after the last move.

4.  The bread crackles as it cools, which is pretty neat.

5.  It makes the house smell amazing.

The recipe:

Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.