No Knead Bread

My friend sent me a link to a no knead bread recipe. (I realize this is old news. This recipe spread like wildfire when it was first published by the NY Times.) I thought there was no way this would work. This technique was never taught to me. In all my years I've been under the impression that kneading was the key to good gluten development.

I read the various blogs and the forums on the freshloaf.com. People raved about this recipe. They even compared it to Peter Reinhart's pain al' ancienne. The recipe was featured by Mark Bittman. I really like his recipes. I decided to give it a try. The recipe uses very few ingredients and makes a small loaf so it not so much of an investment if it turns of disastrous.

NY Times recipe here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html

Better recipe straight from the Sullivan Street Bakery website:
http://www.sullivanstreetbakery.com/recipes/noknead.html

I started off by adding 3 cups of bread flour, 1/4 teaspoon of instant yeast, 1 1/2 teaspoon of salt into a bowl. I stirred everything with a wooden spoon. I then added 1 1/2 cups of filtered water. The recipe as printed in the NY Times had a typo. The article listed 1 5/8 cups. No one measures this way. I had an additional 1/2 cup of water since someone mentioned that they had to increase it to 2 cups at high altitude. After I dumped almost the entire half cup in, I regretted it. I should have added it slowly to see if I needed the entire half cup. My dough ended up a little too wet. If you read other blogs who use 1 5/8 cups of water, their dough is too wet. I watched the Bittman video and my goal was to get a dough with a similar viscosity. I ended up slowly adding a little more flour. The recipe says to produce a wet, shaggy dough. The dough below is wet and shaggy.

Tuesday, January 20 at 9:00 pm - After mixing, ready to be covered and left alone. I checked it in the morning before leaving for work and the dough had flattened out in the bowl with very little yeast activity. I noticed a few bubbles but not much. I re-covered the bowl.

Wednesday, January 21 at 5:20 pm - I left work a little early and immediately check the dough. Lots of bubbles. Bubbles are bigger with a higher hydration dough.

I scraped the dough out onto a floured service and folded it over in half, in another half, and in half again. I formed the dough into a nice ball and put the seam side down on a generously floured towel. (I made a mistake here. I usually wet the towel I use to cover a bowl of dough. I shouldn't have.) I read on the steamy kitchen blog that she sometimes rushes the two hour final rise by putting in a slightly warm oven. I heated the oven for about a minute, turn off the oven, left the oven door slightly ajar until the oven was just warm enough. I stuck the bowl inside the oven and let rise for about an hour.

I stuck the cast iron dutch oven (I used cast iron because the only le creuset that I have is a taller stock pot) in the oven and preheated to 475 degrees. 500 was a bit scary for me. After the preheat, I lined the dutch oven with parchment paper, sprinkled some oat bran on parchment and dumped the dough into the dutch oven. This was a mess. The dough stuck to the towel. I had a hell of a time trying to get the dough off the towel. As I soaked and rinsed the towel, I flour particles washed away and left me with nice gluten strands. The strands of gluten were so pretty. I baked the bread covered for about 25 minutes, removed the cover and then baked for another 15 minutes. Above is the bread straight out of the oven and still in the dutch oven.

Excellent color! I sorta like the oat bran on top of the bread.

I took a slice right away. I should have let it cool but I couldn't wait.

Very moist! I still cannot take very good close up photos with my camera.

The loaf is a little smushed because I took another slice.

I really like this recipe. True it takes a very long time but you can still go on with your life while you let time and a little yeast work its magic on the gluten. I actually like recipes that you can do steps ahead of time. When I made the cinnamon rolls, I had to complete a few steps, leave it alone, constantly check on its progress, do the next step, leave it, continue to check periodically, proceed to the next step...

What I would have done differently:
- I'm not sure what size dutch oven I have. I wouldn't mind a taller loaf that I can use for sandwiches. The height of this loaf is more like the ciabbata bread that Cucina Calore serves with their olive oil. Maybe I can double the recipe and bake in the same dutch oven to get a taller loaf.
- Someone suggested adding a little bit of milk or even a little bit of sugar. I'm not sure how it would effect the chemistry.
- I will put the rounded dough in an oiled bowl instead of on a floured towel. Maybe the towel will work if I use a dry towel.