Doing Away With the Kneading

I stumbled across Paul Hollywood's "City Bakes" series on TV the other week whilst channel hopping and saw him visit this New York bakery where the proprietor was famous for no-knead bread. It's been intriguing me ever since, so I thought I'd give it a whirl - at most I'd wasted half a kilo of flour and a little bit of time...

The program didn't say much about the ingredients beyond the fact that he used half a gram of instant yeast and let the dough sit in a cool place for 24 hours, but I figured what the heck, I could play around and see where it took me.

Ingredients:

350g white bread flour

150g wholemeal bread flour

375-ish grams tepid water

10g salt

1/2g dried active yeast.

Method:

The yeast was first activated in the water; I use DA rather than instant, hence that change from the original method. The flour and salt went into a bowl and was stirred around, after which the water was added.

I actually started out with 325g of water (65% hydration) which is where my yeasted breads are usually at, but while that's fine for kneading, it was much too dry for just mixing briefly and then leaving. So I added a tablespoon at the time until I couldn't see any dry flour - hence the "ish" when it comes to actual water quantity. I will strive to be more accurate next time...

The dough was mixed up, the bowl popped into a clear plastic bag, and put in the hallway to do its bulk ferment at around 15C. The dough was checked at regular intervals (curiosity) and it was certainly rather interesting to see it change over time - almost like a poolish in an odd sort of way.

Have to say that the dough was quite wet and sloppy - almost a batter, but what surprised me was that after around 12 hours it was threatening to escape the bowl. As a safety precaution, into the fridge it went for overnight. In the morning the dough had stiffened up a little and it had maybe only risen another finger in those 12 hours.

I'd already been thinking that there was no way in hell I was going to be able to shape the dough as I'd seen on the TV, so the dough was folded while still in the bowl with a silicone spatula and, well, not quite poured, but let's say eased into a greased and floured loaf tin. That then went into a plastic bag and left to proof while the oven pre-heated. The dough was too wet to be scored, so it wasn't.

The bread went into the oven at around 80% proof, baked for 25 mins @ 230C underneath a cloche (in this case stock pot upturned over pizza stone) and then for a further 20 mins at 200C uncovered. The last 10 mins of the bake time was out of the tin, directly on the hot stone.

Verdict:

I certainly didn't expect the degree of oven spring I got - that really surprised me. The loaf cracked attractively on top and I got a load of blisters on the crust. It also smelled absolutely amazing while it was baking.

The crust was really crisp straight out of the oven but softened slightly as the bread cooled. Despite being quite thin it had a good crunch to it, as well as a nice chew - and a good, nutty flavour.

The crumb wasn't as open as I was expecting, but it was certainly more open than my usual breads. The crumb was soft and bouncy, with a slight gloss to it - almost a sourdough-type texture but not quite. Flavour was really good - I hadn't expected to get this much flavour out of cheap and cheerful flour, so will be interesting to see how this works with better quality ingredients. Again, in terms of taste and eating, this sits as a halfway house between my usual yeasted loaves and my sourdough ones - a very nice bread. Mum reckons it's pretty well much the best I've turned out so far...

And I certainly don't regret baking this loaf in a tin. With a dough this wet, the tin takes care of all the mess and frustration I'd have gone through trying to shape it by hand...

Lessons Learnt:

As I was winging it, it was inevitable that I'd come up against things I'd want to change.

The first is less yeast. That way I'd be able to leave it in the hallway for the whole bulk ferment rather than have it plan its escape from the house and the need to be incarcerated in the fridge. I used 1/2 a gram for the 500g of flour, but could probably get away with half of that tbh...

The second change is rather than adding the water to the flour before mixing, I'm going to add the flour to the water. I was left with a lump of stiff and rather dry dough in the bottom of the bowl (which I didn't add to the loaf btw) and am hoping that switching the order of adding things will take care of that particulat problem.

Third. The loaf just wasn't big enough LOL. A tiddly loaf that size won't last here, so I definitely need to up the quantities. I might have to experiment with easing the proofed dough into my chicken brick somehow, as my big loaf tin won't fit under my stock pot...

End Notes:

I'd definitely try this again. It's an interesting avenue to explore, and if I get good bread out of it at the end, then why the hell not ;-) And it's nice to add another different bread to the repertoire.

And I think someone likes the new cat bed I bought at the Cam Cats show on Saturday... :-)