Quick n Dirty: Low-Knead Bread Recipe

low-knead bread recipe

So about a month ago the trials started with the No-Knead Bread Recipe, both the abridged version and the full-length version.  After a few experiments resulting in some flatter, some crustier and others with just an okay crumb, the winner has been found.  Some off-time has been spent scouring other blogs and insights into easy, high-quality home breads.  The key this time was not in any crazy additives or changes, but perhaps just a re-sequencing of events that were already found in the original order.

One quick qualm was with this recipe’s recommendation for 1/4 oz of instant yeast.  What does that mean when you use spoons and volumetric mechanisms?  Most research, including the back of the jar state 2.25tsps active dry yeast for .25oz instant yeast.  In the idea that bread was wanted, and not a helium balloon, .33tsp ADY was used in the shoot-from-the-hip method.

Speedy no-knead bread (makes one large loaf)

Ingredients:

3 cups bread flour (or all-purpose)

1/4 oz instant yeast

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp natural, unrefined cane sugar (like sugar-in-the-raw)

1 1/2 cups really warm water

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 tsp balsamic vinegar

oil as needed while prepping for second rise

1.  Mix the water, yeast and sugar together and let sit until the concoction begins to foam.

2. Combine flour, salt, olive oil and balsamic  in a large bowl.  Add the foaming concoction and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy.  Cover bowl with plastic wrap.  Let dough rest about 4 hours at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

3. Lightly oil a work surface and place dough on it; fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest at least 30 minutes more.

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 and oil lightly.  Slide your hand under dough and put it into pot, seam side up.  Or just dump the shaggy pile on in.  Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes.

5. 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.

The first rise went well so the dough was removed from the vessel, oiled and kneaded for a minute or two just to make sure the oil was in there and the ball would not stick to the bowl.  Wrapped up like a present and set it back by the heater (in a Maine winter, that is the only place to get things warm unless you have a wood stove).

About fifteen minutes later Castirona (the trusty cast-iron enamel pot) was put in the oven at 450F.  Just got out of shower and got dressed and pulled Castirona out of the oven.  A quick greasing with extra virgin olive oil on a paper-towel and the preparations are done.  Spatula ready in the right hand, the left hand tipped the bowl, with the 2nd risen dough mass, completely upside down and let gravity put in the transition energy.  The amalgam of ingredients stretched out of the plastic mixing bowl and separated slowly from the oiled inside.  The spatula is only needed for the last bit.  Giving the no-longer empty Castirona a shake to even out the jiggling ball of dough that is already reacting to the scalding pot.  Right back in the oven for 30 minutes.  Annndddd go!

A lackadaisical tendency led the bread’s first stead to be for about 35 or so minutes.  No biggie, this is not the critical burn phase.  The second stead ended up being over twenty minutes, probably should have been fifteen or less.  However, if you did not know this you would never have known.  The crust is crunchy and brown, the crumb is airy and absorbitant and there is some cracking on top.

Twenty minutes or more of resting are advised, then the use of a decent  breadknife.  Olive oil with pepper, balsamic vinegar and diced tomatoes, and thin slices of wicked fresh avocado along with a Tempranillo made this bread absolutely stellar (and a healthy appetizer to boot).

The No-Knead Bread Recipe…

So lately I have been putting all of my eggs in one flying basket and only riding Jetblue.  Their jetting experience has won me over from the leg room and 36 channels of television to the Wifi and quality venues in the Jetblue terminals.  On one of my last trips through JFK, a windstorm kicked up and ended up funneling three airports worth of jets through JFK’s air traffic control.  Caught up in a holding pattern for a while and then, inversely, caught taxiing on the ground, there was plenty of time to watch the NYTimes/Jetblue channel.  There are interviews with notable actors and chefs, video journals of 36 hr travel stints and recipes by the Minimalist chef Mark Bittman.  Bittman’s ‘Bitten’ was revisiting a no-knead bread recipe that he covered in 2006 with Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bread.

Originally this bread spread like wildfire on cooking blogs for the ease and from-the-hip methods that created an absolutely stellar bread.  The only observable downfall, from an amateur’s point of view, is the 12-20 hour sitting time the bread needed to let the yeast do its business.  Now Bittman was trying to speed up the recipe by overpopulating the original mix with more yeast.  The problem with this according to Lahey, whose standing moitif is that long, slow fermentation is the holy grail to bread making, is that the yeasty beasties start to digest more of the natural sugars in the bread, leaving you with a less ideal, although faster created, Boule style bread.  So the two bread-stars put their heads back together and ended up with a three to four hour rising time.  So this is with what I shall start.

three cups of flour (std white)
1/4 tsp yeast
1 tsp fresh ground sea salt
1 9/16 cup of really warm water
1/4 tsp red wine vinegar

mix up in a bowl, cover and let sit for 3-4 hours

When the dough came out and fell to a floured surface the mixture was still very loose and sticky.  Still I tried folding the edges over and balling it up.  This really did not happen in a textbook manner because the amalgam was still so soft that it could not keep shape.  Every time I folded one edge over on itself it kept rolling back as it gravity heavier in that spot.  It reminded me of a baby that cannot keep its head upright due to underdeveloped musculature.  Nevertheless, I still wrapped the doughy ball in a floured all-cotton cloth and will let it set for about an hour.

Thinking about the oven safe potential of my Silit stainless steel cookware, I scoured the internet looked for the temperature ceiling for my pot and could not find one.  Oh well, the show still needs to go on.  Preheating the oven, pot already inside, to 450 degrees is the next step before the final leg of the no knead bread challenge.  Taking the pot out to put the bread in showed no visible damage to the one weak area of the pot: a hard rubber piece between the metal handle and the glass lid.  The last time this piece expanded due to high absolute heat while cooking it contracted equally so, and all I had to do was loosen the screw, nudge it into place and then tighten; all back to normal.

Sitting on the counter for an hour, it seemed as if the wrapped dough ball did not expand, but instead, due to the high moisture content, just stuck like mad to the towel.  By the time the dough separated from its new cottony partner, about a 1/5 of it didn’t get into the preheated pot, to live forever with the towel.  The recipe states to shake the pot once or twice to get the bread into optimal position.  In my experiment, once the dough hit pot it already started to cook.  So upon a light shaking it changed but was already in its g-spot.

Thirty minutes with the top on, then fifteen with the top off revealed a bread to be eaten.  Okay, minus any type of a disclaimer, I say the bread was tasty, but not what will be the acme of my baking efforts.  The crust was good, but not some stellar cracked fantasy crust.  The rise was about the same you get from a group of high school seniors from the lunch lady….a little rowdy but nothing exceptional.  The crumb was a little moist, but that might be due to my impatience in not letting it rest long enough.  It was still really tasty for my first excursion into the world of breads.

The next morning the bread I had for breakfast was stellar.  I toasted it in the broiler and the crust was still flexibly yet crunchy and the crumb had dried out a bit, making it perfect for blackberry jam.  My next foray is already underway with two balls sitting out in the ‘lab’.  This time I’m all in on the OG recipe: 18 hours or bust.  The second ball is a wild experiment similar to the Mark Bittman faster-bread recipe.  Overpopulate the hell out of the yeast but add some vinegar, so there is more sugar for the yeast to enjoy without devouring the flavor precursors from the bread.  We will see shortly….