New York Times Bread anyone?

[lovecooking]

Just put the stuff in the bowl, it's now on it's own until many hours from now.

Anyone else make the stuff?

[scubadoo97]

Are you speaking about the "No Knead Bread". If so I've made it a few times.

[lovecooking]

yeh I am I like how versatile it is.

[scubadoo97]

I found the original recipe a little bland but love the texture and large crumb.

I bumped the salt which helped and have mixed things like kalamata olives, roasted garlic and rosemary which turned out great. My attempts at whole wheat where not so good. I haven't made it in a long while. Why? maybe due to the fact that I had to plan ahead to make this bread. But the good part is that I had nevered baked bread before and my first attempt produced bread that was better than I can buy locally.

[paulraphael]

The technique can make amazing quality bread. But don't be fooled by how simple the recipe looks ... it's technically intricate and tricky to get to work properly.

The originator of the technique is Jim Lahey at Sullivan St. Bakery ... possibly the best breadmaker in NYC. His original NYT article generated so much frustrated email that he wrote a followup a couple of months later with more details.

There's a thread about a million pages long on eGullet on the topic ... a dozen or more people workshopping the technique and refining it.

Personally, I find the dough too difficult to handle (and I like slack doughs). The timing is also really dependent on room temperature. I find delayed fermentation techniques that age the dough in the fridge, that require a bit of kneading, to be more practical.

[Fred]

I've never tried it. What makes the formula for no knead dough different?

[scubadoo97]

Fred, here the video that help start this craze. Mark Bittman and Jim Lahey at Sullivan St. Bakery

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13Ah9ES2yTU

[scubadoo97]

One of my first attempts and this from someone who doesn't bake.

http://i670.photobucket.com/albums/vv61/scubadoo97/CIMG4176.jpg
http://i670.photobucket.com/albums/vv61/scubadoo97/CIMG4178.jpg

[Fred]

It's pretty hard for me to watch those videos. I'm in the country without broadband. The loaf looks great. What makes the formula different?

[scubadoo97]

Here's the written recipe. The dough is very wet and it uses very little yeast and relies on the long fermentation. The result is large gas bubbles formed during baking for that large crumb and a good sturdy hard crust.

No-Knead Bread
makes one 1.5 pound loaf

Originally published by Mark Bittman in the New York Times
Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours rising

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour (18 oz by weight), more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

[Fred]

Simple enough. It reminds me a little of what I go through to make sourdough. The fermentation time is around 8 hours for that.

But the purpose of kneading dough is to work the gluten and that makes the end product chewy. I can't help but wonder if this formula would result in something with a texture more like muffins than bread?

[jwang]

I love that picture of the bread scubadoo, it makes me really want to try this recipe out. Did you add the olives while mixing the dough together? I'm a horrible baker.


The technique can make amazing quality bread. But don't be fooled by how simple the recipe looks ... it's technically intricate and tricky to get to work properly.

Which part is the technically intricate part I should be aware of?

[scubadoo97]

I added the extras; olives, roasted garlic and rosemary to the dry ingredients before adding the water. Once you add the water you mix it quickly and let it sit covered.

[paulraphael]

Which part is the technically intricate part I should be aware of?

Intricate might be an overstatement, but you have to attend carefully to all the details, and know that variables like room temperature and type of flour will make especially big differences.

And working with very high hydration doughs, especially getting them into a dutch oven, is a pain. It's like working with glue.

Here's (http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=95345) a ton of discussion on it.

[paulraphael]

But the purpose of kneading dough is to work the gluten and that makes the end product chewy. I can't help but wonder if this formula would result in something with a texture more like muffins than bread?


No, it develops as much gluten as any other method. The idea is that if hydration is high enough, water and protein molecules are free to migrate through the dough, so gluten forms on its own without any mechanical mixing.

It's like taking the autolyse or wet-mixing techniques to their logical conclusion.

[paulraphael]

One of the ingenious elements of Jim's method has nothing to do do with the lack of kneading. Baking bread in a dutch oven is a revelation.

It completely solves the problem of getting enough steam in a regular oven. The enclosed space in the dutch oven lets the steam coming off the bread itself do the work. Then after the first few minutes you remove th lid and the crust is free to brown. And the heat capacity of an iron dutch oven is very high, working just like a baking stone or brick oven floor.

The drawback is that getting a well formed loaf into a 500 degree dutch oven isn't my idea of fun. And you need to make sure any handle on the lid can take your baking temperature (creuset actually makes stainless knobs that you can substitute. or you can get something from the hardware store).

[lovecooking]

Not sure if anyone else tivo's the Cooks Illustrated tv show.
I do and one of the shows I viewed yesterday was about
the NYTimes bread but their take on it and their improving if you will.
Made sense to me, not as wet, more last and vinegar and I'm even thinking they added beer to the wetness. I won't be doing or using that but I can try soda water, maybe it's the bubbles. I believe they said 15 kneads of the dough. The result was gorgeous, I'll be doing it this way too.

[eeediot]

Ya speaking of Americas Test Kitchen, this may actually be highly relevant for PaulRaphael. Basically they took the hydration level down so now it's a good bit easier to work with. And instead of "no knead" they made it "almost no Knead" which supposedly yields more consistent results as you make temperature and other variables slightly less important in gluten formation. It makes sense in that for very little work (like 2 minutes of kneading) you get far more consistent results than absolutely no work. As for the beer, that was mostly for taste so i don't think it's essential - though you would need to substitute it with some other liquid to keep the hydration level constant.

[scubadoo97]

The beer helped to give the bread the flavor of a good dose of yeast

[paulraphael]

By making it "almost no knead," they're making it similar to a lot of other artisan breads. That describes almost all the bread I make, actually. I'm not down with adding the beer. I like to get all the flavor out of the wheat ... that's the most interesting part of the challenge for me.

[VHo]

awesome looking loaf scuba.

[9mmbhp]

A couple of no knead loaves from the archives... a golden raisin & fennel seed and an olive, onion and red pepper.

[scubadoo97]

That loaf looks really nice

[paulraphael]

Yeah, looks delicous. Way better than my few attempts at this method.