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I have been a fan of the no-knead bread ever since two of my friends told me about it having been featured in the NY times by Mark Bittman. Now, Bittman, the minimalist guru, is not the one responsible for the No-Knead Bread; sure he helped to sell the concept by featuring it in his column for the NY times, but the mind/man behind the No-Knead success has been Jim Lahey- founder of the Sullivan Street Bakery in New York City. In 2006, the NY times mentioned the no-knead bread for the first time and it just exploded in the amateur bakers’ world, the success of the bread reached phenomenal heights to the extent that Anothony Bourdain called Lahey the Dalai Lama of bread baking. In 2008, Bittman came back with a twist on this no-knead concept and introduced, alongside Lahey, a speedy no-knead concept- where the idea was basically to add more yeast. And although for an amateur baker the speedy no-knead is a revelation, personally, to me, the holes that the bread webs aren’t big enough to give it the perfect flaky/airy crumb. The thing that I love about the no-knead bread is the use of Dutch oven, I meaning by using this noble vessel one can truly get the heat of a professional oven and the physics behind it is just incredible that even a douche, like myself can prepare some great breads. In the past, I have tried the original no-knead bread, which has an initial rising time of 18 hours and then a secondary rising time of 2 hours before it hits the scorching hot Dutch oven. I have also tried the speedy no-knead too, which has a first rise time of 4 to 5 hours, followed by another hour.  So in my quest to understand more no knead and more Lahey, I got Lahey’s bread book, “My Bread-The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method". One of the first recipes that inspired me from Lahey’s book was the Pan co’ Santi (Walnut bread); this bread contains bread flour, raisins, walnuts, salt, cinnamon, yeast, black pepper, water and cornmeal for dusting. Now, since I am allergic to walnuts, well not exactly, but since I do not like walnuts- I opted for its exodus. Obviously, with walnuts now out of the scene- the bread wasn’t walnut bread anymore, and so I added some cranberry and called it cranberry-raisin bread.  Also, what was exciting to taste was the cinnamon alongside the black pepper with the cranberry and raisins. I have to confess, this was a good festive bread. High on my success of the cranberry-raisin bread, I decided to pull another bread recipe of Lahey’s, this one called the olive bread or Pane all’Olive. Now, the olive bread had of course bread flour, pitted olives, yeast, water and cornmeal for dusting. Although, Lahey strongly suggested to use kalamata olives, since they are soaked in pure salt brine, it would add to the taste of the bread- however, the cheap bastard that I am, I opted for the regular California olives.  Now, in the past when I have made olive bread, I have witnessed problems with gradually introducing olives within the bread, for olives have a huge amount of water and keep wetting my bread dough to where I am pushed to use more bread flour just to keep the dough dry enough for baking.  So when I was making Leahy’s olive bread, I tried to outsmart the liquefied olives by air-drying it with a hair dryer. Did it work? Yes, to some extent or at least I thought when introducing the olives to the flour mixture.  Unfortunately, after the first and second rising, I knew for sure that the motherfucking olives had peed yet again in my flour. This led to very soggy dough, which was extremely hard to handle. I mean as such it is hard to control the aesthetic of the no-knead bread when you are trying to toss it up in the Dutch oven without burning your hand. Somehow after stretching my dough somewhat, I was able to slam it into the container and finally get in the conventional oven to bake.  The results weren’t very satisfying…not only the bread was somewhat moist, the culprit being the olives-it almost tasted like it didn’t have any salt.  Why so? Well, one could say because Leahy didn’t introduce any salt in it, and why that- because he believed that the kalamata olives brined in sea salt would bring enough saltiness to the bread.  The only thing that I was glad about this bread at that point of time was that thankfully, listening to the wife, I had introduced some rosemary and garlic into the flour mixture, which made the bread somewhat edible. Moral of the blog, you live and learn and you bake and get better. To be continued…

So after two loaves with tons of flavor, but not the rise that I was looking for, I decided to try to make up my own honey whole wheat recipe.  I know, 'tis a little ambitious for a novice whole wheat baker, but I did do a little research beforehand, and it was wildly successful!!  So here's the recipe!

Night Before:

1 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups bread flour
2 1/2 cups warm water
2t yeast

Combine all ingredients together and mix until well incorporated, then cover and let sit overnight. Mine was pretty wet:

Day of:

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups bread flour
1/2 cup honey
4 tbsp butter
1/4 cup milk
2t salt
1t yeast

First, stir in honey, butter, milk, salt, and yeast until they are pretty well incorporated.  Then add your flour by the 1/2 cup.

The dough is going to be a pretty sticky mess, but that's ok. Turn the dough out onto a lightly oiled surface and work it the best you can. I tried kneading, which was quite impossible, so you could almost classify this as a no-knead bread.  When I do this again I might incorporate some stretch and folds into this stage of the breadmaking process.  Anyways, shape your dough into a ball and put into an oiled bowl, turn once to coat, and let rise for 45 minutes.

Do your first stretch and fold, put the dough back in the bowl, let it rise for another 45 minutes, and then do your second stretch and fold.*

Now let the dough rise until double its original size.  Approximately 75 minutes for me.  Mine looked like this:

Now, divide your dough evenly in half and preshape into two loaves, let rest for 10 minutes.**

Then, do the final shapingof your loaves and put in oiled bread pans.  Cover them loosely with plastic wrap and let rise til doubled.  Mine only took 45 minutes.

^Those obviously aren't risen, I just snapped a quick photo before covering them for the rise.  I was a little iffy about how these would turn out (especially lefty over there.) because the surface tension just didn't seem to be there like it had before.  Anyways, I think you'll see that I had little to worry about.

Once your loaves are risen, slash them down the middle, and throw in the oven at 375F until they are a deep golden brown and sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. Or until they look like this!

And now for the long-awaited crumb shot:

This bread is so super soft and fluffy, the crust is not as crunchy as the other recipe (which I do miss) but it does make for great sandwich bread in that respect.  This one's going into our family cookbook :)

Rachel

**for the shaping of my loaves I used this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_3zBaKkxMY

*for stretching and folding, this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1timJlCT3PM