Inspired by this “Yecora Rojo Sourdough Breads (No Knead Version too)” recipe on Breadtopia, I thought I’d try a non-sourdough version that I sort of crossed with my basic No Knead recipe.

The recipe is 200 grams King Arthur Bread Flour, 200 grams fresh-milled Yecora Rojo wheat flour, 336 grams cool water (84% hydration), 8 grams kosher salt (2%), and 1/4 tsp instant (not rapid-rise) yeast. Combine all in a bowl and mix until it’s a homogenous mass. Cover and leave on the counter.

I started the dough at 7pm the day before baking. At 11pm the dough was looking pretty feisty and had about doubled, so I did some Rubaud folds and put the container into the refrigerator, mostly because I preferred sleep over handling bread at that hour.

I did two more Rubaud folds at 1am and 4am, each time returning the dough to the refrigerator. At 4am the dough was still fairly shaggy but it was coming together. I removed the dough from the refrigerator at 6am and did coil folds at 6am, 7am, and 8am.

The dough was smooth and handled well after the 8am coil fold so I moved it to a covered banneton. At 9am I preheated the oven and our Le Creuset bread oven to 460F. At 10am the dough went onto a parchment and was slashed, then moved over to the bread oven. I reduced the temperature to 450F and baked the dough for 20 minutes covered, then 22 minutes uncovered. (The same time and process that I use for No Knead bread, though most times I’ll just go directly into the Le Creuset or a dutch oven rather than starting on parchment.) Cool on a baking rack.

The 84% hydration matches the Breadtopia recipe. The 1/4 tsp instant yeast matches my normal No Knead recipe. The bread measured 205F when I removed it from the oven which (again) is in-line with Breadtopia.

The bread was very moist. It had a decently open crumb, though it wasn’t quite as open as the pictures on Breadtopia. My feeling is that the dough could have possibly used another round or two of coil folds, but that was going to put the timing really close to when we needed to take it across town.

I was happy with the crust too, it had a nice bite to it but not “too much”. The next time around I’m going to try a little less flour in the banneton — I was probably too concerned with the dough easily releasing from the banneton so I may have overdone it a bit.

I don’t normally drop breads that I haven’t tested at all into a group setting, but I was reasonably confident everything had worked out and the bread was well received. So that was good.

The next time I’ll probably move the dough to the refrigerator after a shorter initial room temperature rise, then incorporate coil folds as soon as the dough will allow it. It might be the right answer is to do some Rubaud folds in the first hour prior to refrigerating overnight, then moving the dough back to the counter in the morning and using coil folds until the dough is ready.

Yecora Rojo is a Hard Red Spring wheat variety developed in the 1970’s. It’s my understanding that it’s used by some well-known bakeries and in flour blends for “artisan breads”. Last week I was buying wheat berries and Rogue de Bordeaux was not available, so I added Yecora Rojo to the Breadtopia shopping cart. I’m glad I did. It (predictably) functions well as an artisan bread flour. Based on one bake it’s not finicky to work with. The taste is not assertive and I think even people who Don’t Like Wheat Bread would eat it, especially if the percentage of Yecora Rojo was cut back to 20% or so.

Happy baking.