Reliable CI no-knead recipe falls apart when adding cheese and chilis
I've made Cook's Illustrated's "almost-no-knead" recipe many times, but the variation that adds shredded cheese jalapenos is giving me fits.
The basic dough is 15oz flour to 10.5oz liquid (3 oz beer, 7oz water, 1/2oz vinegar), 1/2T salt, 1/4t yeast. It forms a pretty, if not prize-winning loaf, and is low-effort to make. (Make the dough, rise 8-18 hours, knead 10-15 times and form, rise two hours, bake @425 for 50 minutes in a dutch oven.)
One listed variation is to add 1c shredded cheese and 2 sliced jalapeno peppers during the initial mix. The first time I made it, it rose a lot, then fell after coming out of the oven. The second time it did the same. The third time I added some "dough enhancer"; it spread out in the oven, and I ended up with a disc-shaped loaf.
I have attempt #4 on it's second rise now, and the dough simply didn't come together. It was a sticky, unmanageable, mess, and refused to form into a ball. The jalapenos don't appear dessicated to any significant degree, so they don't seem to contribute much moisture to the loaf. I'm at a loss. The bread is delicious, but simply will not behave properly, and I can only make so many loaves of this specialty bread before I get tired of it.
but often I will make a dough and split it to make two loaves, one with inclusions and the other without. I find often the bread with inclusions will not rise as high as the one without, I have always attributed it to gravity and the ability of the dough to suspend the inclusions.
I'd have to say the obvious - nix the dough enhancer. I would also forget the vinegar, it is often used to limit gluten development, and that's not what ya want in this case. Enjoy!
For the few loaves I have made with inclusions, adding them during lamination (instead of during initial mixing) worked better for me. I wonder if that would work well on this recipe?
Well, I figured it out. I was making another attempt, and was checking the expiration date on my bag of cheese. I happened to glance at the ingredients list, and there at the bottom: "Natamycin (A Natural Mold Inhibitor)"
A quick Google check, and... Natamycin has another use: Treating yeast infections. I'd say that would do the trick. I think I used cheese from an older, open, bag for the first batch, and maybe the Natamycin was wore out? Anyway, after the batch I just put together probably flops, I'll give it a last try using block cheese.
Let's say 1 cup of cheese is approximately 8 oz of weight. You are adding almost 50% cheese weight as a percentage fo flour weight. Too much in my view. Still too much if the 8oz/cup ratio is heavy. Too much cheese, and probably too much jalapeno due to the small loaf size and moisture in the jalapeno.
I see posts on this site where attempts are being made to bake sandwiches in the form of a loaf of bread - by adding large quantities of protein, fruit or veggies into a dough, and expecting a complete sandwich to come out of the oven.
It doesn't work that way. Bake the bread. Then add the cheese, meat, spreads, fruit, whatever. Then enjoy it.
Lastly, I incorporate add-ins (e.g. seeds) during the second half of the stretch-fold process. No-knead bread is a corner cutting exercise, and I don't make bread this way. Taking a corner cutting approach, and adding a large quantity of protein is not a strategy for success. These comments are not personal, they stem from having been part of this site for a reasonable chunk of time and seeing the same approach, and results, repeated.
1c of shredded cheese is only 4oz. And since it doesn't melt until bake, it is certainly very different from adding that much milk powder or the like. And having cheese and peppers baked in to the load is *very* different from adding them on top.
@sirwired OK, 1 cup of cheese weighs 4oz. It's still too much in my view. There is no comparison to milk powder and cheese - one is a powder and one is large particulate coagulated protein, water and fat. Add-ins are a common source of baking problems. Add-in weight, type and when added in the process affect results.