June 15, 2010 - 4:37pm
No Knead Bread
This is my first post in quite some time. I have been experimenting with the no knead breads. I have so very little time to devote to making breads. Being a bachelor with a full time job, a house, pets, and a garden andyard to tend to keeps me plenty busy. I am satisfied and enjoy trying new flavors from my herb garden. My breads have a wonderful crunchy crust and chewy crumb.
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so far the no knead breads are winning! Can't knead due to back and choulder problems, so this is a good solution.
Made a starter and have some essentially no knead sour dough in the fridge, havent' baked it, but that is on the list for today.
I didn't use any yeast in the bread, just the starter, which is 1:1 flour and water, made with plain old all purpose unbleached flour. It sits in a crock on my counter and seems to be happy. the bread raised very nicely in its container, and its still up on the contianer in the fridge, so have hopes of it being a good batch. Its the plain all white flour bread from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a day. Will try a batch of the whole wheat if this works.
I used 2 cups of the starter, and subtracted 1 cup of the water and 1 cup of the flour from the basic recipe, added the salt and mixed, and let raise as suggested. Then refirgerated.
i'm interested in your recipe & how your bread turns out.
please post your recipe & results.
thanks, claudia
Master recipe from Artisan Bread In 5 Minutes a Day.
3 cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 Tablespoons of yeast (which I substituted my 2 cups of sour dough starter with)
1 1/2 Tablespoons kosher or other coarse salt (used a sel de mare or sea salt)and probably only put in about a tablespoon.
6 1/2 cups of unbleached flour (plain old five roses unbleached all purpose)
Having used the one to one starter 1 cup of flour to one of water and fed with that ratio, I simple used 2 cups of water and 5 1/2 cups of flour and no yeast and three large pinches of salt.
Mixed it in my Kitchen Aid mixer with the dough hook, I always put the water in the bowl first and add the dry ingredients. Mix with the dough hook and when it startes getting thick and leaving the sides, put into the bowl or I use a plastic box for the dough to raise (I have a small hole in the lid for gas to escape) let raise on the counter on in the oven with the light on for a couple of hours, and then refirdgerate overnight or until you have time to bake.
The sour dough starter is a Greek starter done with basil (fresh plant) which I bought from the store and it was supposed to be organic
Take your cup of lukewarm water and dip the basil stem into the water three times (its supposed to be blessed basil from a Saints day celebrated in Greece) and add the cup of flour, mix together and place the basil on top of some plain flour sprinkled on top of the mix, let it set overnight on the counter covered but not to tightly (don't use a screw top jar unless you leave a tiny hole in the lid. I have a 1/2 gallon crock that my mother used for her starter years ago, it has a small round glass lid from a broken casserole although my mother once had a wooden lid made for it.
The bread recipe is for 4 loaves of bread about 1 pound each. When you are ready to bake the bread, you take a bit of flour and sprinkle on the dough, and grab a chunk the size of a grapefruit about 1 pound in weight, and cut it from the main mass, quickly shape it into a round boule by pulling the edges down under the ball, and turning a quarter turn and pulling the dough down again, until you have cloaked the whole ball of dough (4 turns) then set the finished boule onto a peel sprinkled with whatever (cornmeal, rice flour etc so the dough will slide off) and cover lightly to let raise. Raise it for about 60 -90 minutes so its well warmed up from the fridge. If you want you can bake with the dough right away, but it won't have the flavour of the older dough.
Turn the oven on about 20 minutes before ready to bake to at least 450F with a stone in the oven, and a small stainless steel bowl (empty) on the floor of the oven where you can put a cup or so of boiling water for steam. I also reccomned you buy an oven thermometer and check the temp in your oven before baking. Mine which I have used for years was actually heating 20 degrees under the posted temp on the control. So my first breads didn't do so well. If you don't want to find a bowl to put water in, you can use a pan or simply invert a steel or oven proof glass bowl over the bread to enclose it for steam.
I use a small sprayer bottle with water in and spray the top of the loaf, and slash just before going in oven. Slash with a serated bread knife, and about 1/4 inch deep, place the loaf on the hot stone, and steam it with either method, bake it for 10 -15 minutes with the bowl on and finish with a 15 or so minute bake until the crust is brown enough to suit you. The book says 30 minutes.
I have pictures of some of my breads on www.PictureTrail.com/ebeaton in the bread album.
thanks for sharing the recipe & your pictures. the pictures were wonderful - bread & family.
i'm looking forward to trying the recipe since i'm recovering from a right distal radius fracture that required 3 surgeries. i am post 1 yr but if i do to much i still have some pain.
claudia
always had trouble with my wrists, but can certainly empathise with the pin in the wrist from the fracture and how long its taking to fully heal. I fell several years ago and while I didn't break anything they were worried about a tiny bone that apparently can die if the hand isn't casted and the blood flow (which only has one way to get in and out) isn't kept open. They said that the fractures in that bone don't show up for 10 to 14 days and by that time its too late and your hand becomes totally useless. So they put a cast on my hand and took xrays in 10 days and said it was ok, but I couldn't barely lift an empty cup let alone do anything with that hand for well over a year (deep bruising to the bone is what the dr said) and it was a further 2 years before any use didn't kill me later. I could slowly build up what I could do, and even now 5 years later I still have trouble with it getting tired faster than normal. I am right handed and of course it was my right wrist. My left was always weaker, now its the other way round.
I also have back problems due to foolishness as a child and as a result have had shoulder problems which of course the fall didn't help! So the no knead bread recipes are a GOD send for me, and since they work well, and make edible bread (it disappears fast enough that I know its good) I am inclined to only play with the more difficult recipes from here. I will hopefully manage at least one of the other breads sometime, but right now its the no knead until I have a strong person at home to help with the regular kneading, although stretch and fold is a technique I would like to explore as well. Just right now we are still busy with the yard work, due to the late snowstorm that took down trees and so forth.
i thank god & the person who developed this technique.
you've have several injuries that are probably much worse than mine.
i appreciate you sharing you're recipe. i occasionally do the stretch & fold but there are times i have wrist problems because of it.
i'm very sorry about your late snowstorm. cleaning up is never fun. i live in phoenix, az & @ 5 pm mst. we have 108 F in our area. sky harbor (official site) is also 108F. no matter were you live, there are weather issues.
thank you again for your recipe. i plan to try it soon
claudia
never what one wants. The farmer's here are early with the crops in, and in Saskachewan they are having flooding and late to not getting them in at all. So no one is happy.
Here the weather is nice for a change,except its darn cold overnight, barely above the freezing mark, which is really unusual for this time of year, and today it was probably 85 or 90 in the sun, and now its barely 65, and will get down to 45 tonight.
I love the no knead bread, its so great, and the best thing is you can mix a double batch of it, and bake it as you need it.
I baked the sourdough today, it smells wonderful but didn't get a lot of oven spring, I am sure they over proofed though since I made them up and let them raise and wound up forgetting them for several hours while something else went on, but they do look nice, although a little flat, nothing like the last try, that was barely and inch high and hard as rock. So at least its working, now if I could manage to bake it on time it probably would be much better.
The sour dough crust was way too thick, I know many are worring about crusts, this one is so hard you can't cut it! The bread tastes good though and the crumb isn't bad, so wonder what it was that made the crust so thick and hard. I did spray it with oil and cover it with plastic while raiseing, so can't for the life of me think why it did what it did.
I fully empathize with shouler and spine injuries.
Since having my neck broken in three places [24 years ago], I have endured 6 spinal surgeries, and have become hypo-allergic to kneading.
Did the no-knead stuff for a while, but have become addicted to Peter Reinhart's stretch and fold recipes, baked off in Sassafras La Cloche, or outdoors over charcoal in the Big Green Egg.
FYI -- Have been studying Middle Egyptian for about four years, now. Collier, in his instruction book, leads off with a wall painting from an ancient Egyptian tomb. There is a fellow sitting cross legged, holding a goose on a stick over a bed of charcoal.
The inscription reads -- "Look! I have been roasting since the beginning of time, and I have never seen the likes of this goose!"
It's humbling to known that at least 6000 years ago, the ancients were baking with just about the same formulas and techniques we use today!
~ B