This fall there are three heavyweights releasing books about easy artisan baking: Peter Reinhart is releasing his Artisan Breads Every Day, Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François are following up their Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day with Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day , and Jim Lahey's book My Bread has just come out.

Jim is the founder of New York City's Sullivan Street Bakery and the inspiration for Mark Bittman's famous No-Knead Bread formula that ran in the New York Times three years ago.  My Bread begins with the basic "bread in a pot" no-knead recipe but expands upon it considerably.  He includes formulas (with both weights and measures) for rye, whole wheat, olive, walnut, and cheese variations of the no-knead bread. Lahey was inspired by Italian breads, so his book includes numerous pizza and focaccia recipes.  Other interesting sounding recipes  in the book include "Peanut Butter and Jelly Bread" and a Carrot Bread.  There is a long chapter on sandwiches that include his recipes for fillings such as Rosemary Roast Beef, Citrus Roast Pork, and Marinated Eggplant and Beets.  Soup and panini recipes are included in the book as well, giving you most everything you would need to run a top-notch neighborhood cafe.

Fan of Sullivan Street Bakery or folks who love the "bread in a pot" no-knead technique will certainly enjoy Lahey's book.   My Bread has much to offer other bakers too and sets a high bar for the other upcoming releases.

I get that no-knead bread is both convenient and requires little in the way of equipment.  What are some other advantages to baking this way?  And, surely, there must be  some disadvantages.  What might those be?

I posted this tutorail on another food site before they banned me from the site (no sense of humor...their loss. LOL), so rather than give the link to that site I figured some of the newer artisan bakers could benefit from this tutorial, especially if they are having difficulty working with wet dough. Hopefully many will benefit from the dialog and the pictures.

No Knead Bread & Parchment Paper
By: Joe Valencic, Mentor, Ohio

I see this topic come up frequently, especially when someone is being challenged by handling this very loose dough. Some folks can understand a verbal description of using parchment paper, but some need to SEE what is being explained in order to fully understand. I’m a person who likes lots of pictures to make sure I’m doing things as described, and for those of you who are like me, here’s a short tutorial on working with parchment paper and no-knead bread dough.

I mainly work with round baking vessels for this bread, but I do own one La Cloche Oblong Clay Baker. Here are two of my many choices for baking vessels, and the proofing baskets I use for them. Notice how the baskets are similar in size to the baking dishes. This is important so that the proofed dough is not larger than its baking vessel.

I take a sheet of parchment paper and work it into the basket, being careful to fit it closely to the inside of the basket. Once I’m happy with the paper placement, I trim off the excess so that there is about 2” of paper left over the basket edge for lifting the proofed dough. I then spray a liberal coating of cooking spray on the parchment paper to prevent the dough from sticking to the paper. Shape the dough and then drop it in the basket and cover with plastic to rise for about 60 minutes.

Once the dough has risen and is ready for the oven, I like to ‘dress up’ my No-Knead bread with a good topping of 10-grain cereal. I take a spray bottle of water and wet the top of the dough so the grain will stick, then sprinkle a liberal amount of cereal on top of the loaf. You could also use wheat bran, oatmeal or other toppings that you enjoy.

You’re now ready to put the dough in the cooking vessel. Just lift the dough by the parchment paper edges and place the whole thing into your pot. Put on the cover and bake as usual. To save energy I like to bake two loaves at a time. The dissimilar shapes work very well for this, but I can also fit two round baking dishes in my oven. If doing this, make sure there is at least 1” between vessels and away from walls so the air can circulate around the pots in the oven.

When the bread is done remove the pan from the oven using long oven mitts. Don’t try to lift the bread by the parchment paper, because it will just fall apart in your hands.

Tip the bread out of the pan using the oven mitts and place on a wire rack to cool. For best results, allow bread to cool for at least two hours before cutting.
If you did it all correctly, you will be left with beautiful, delicious bread and a shell of parchment paper to throw away.

I hope this makes your No-Knead baking experience more enjoyable.

I am new to the "No-Knead process" of making breads.  I recently bought the book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.   Today, I made two long  1.25# loaves from my Peasant Bread dough which had been in the fridge for 9 days.  I wanted to test the dough, flavor, rising,...by leaving it in the fridge this long.   The dough was very "wet" to handle, and I folded it quite a few times, very lightly adding flour, to make the dough feel silky & not sticky.  I did not knead it.  Since it looked still "wet", I rolled the fat "baguettes" in a light flour coating, and set them in my excellent-quality non-stick French bread pans (was afraid to put these directly on the stone,..even if covered with cornmeal).  I let the dough rest for 50 minutes.  They rose some, even though the dough was still quite cold. I baked them at 425 degrees convection for 29 minutes.  The oven spring was superb.  The crumb is what I wanted, "custardy".  The loaves are excellent in color and flavor.  But they stuck horridly to my good pans, resulting in a lousy appearance.  Should I have added more flour, and risked losing the open crumb?  Should I have oiled my great pans? (I have never done so in the past).    Would these loaves have stuck to parchment as bad as they did to my quality pans...?  I didn't wan't to add too much flour.  I don't use products like PAM.    The bread is great,....but .......

Creating a sourdough loaf at home like the ones I enjoyed  from my days in San Francisco in the late 60's has been an on-going quest for me. A couple of weeks ago, I searched the forum and found a great recipe for no-knead sourdough bread. I've tried it a couple of times with decent results, but not exactly what I was after.

This last weekend I made another stab at it. Like so many of us, I always seem to 'freelance' a bit with recipes . . . adding or modifying a few ingredients here and there. Maybe that's why I have not completed my quest for the perfect sourdough!

I added abit of malt syrup and some of my rye starter to the mix. When I weighed and added the flour, I had obviously screwed-up in measuring the water. My dough was like soup. So rather than throw the whole batch out, I added flour 'till it 'felt' right then baked the now rather large loaf.

It turned perfect! Great oven spring, thick, golden, crispy/chewy crust, the open crumb and sour flavor I remember from my mis-spent youth! Then I realized that I had no way of exactly duplicating what I had done . . . I just stumbled into the combination of ingredients while trying to correct my mistake with the liquid. I made it to the mountain top but can't find the trail I took.

Anyway, I have not given up. But I can't help but wonder if there is some power somewhere in the universe that is enjoying messing with my head!

For those familiar with the no-knead method, here's a recipe that I formulated and tried last week.  The result surpassed my expectations. 

For one loaf:

250 grams unbleached white flour

100 grams fine-ground cornmeal

2 tsps (10 grams) vital wheat gluten

275 grams water

1/2 tsp instant yeast

1 tsp sea salt 

I stumbled upon the following article in the NY Times on a new book called, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

From the looks of it, it seems that the author takes a master recipe in which a wet dough is mixed, but not kneaded, and then popped in the fridge overnight, and then adds a lot of variations to create different breads.

I Made 3 loaves today!
It came out great!
1)first loaf 100% whole wheat
2)second loaf 50% whole wheat ,50% all-purpose flour
3)third loaf 100% all-purpose flour

I'm doing a semi-WW "boat bread", kind of like a couple of SD w/fair amount of whole grain posts I've seen. I'm going sailing up toward Block Island this weekend, and for the first time will try to bake on board a sailboat. The oven may be anemic, but I hope it's hot enough so I can just bake long and slow, I guess.