Perhaps it’s the need to be able to assure ourselves that we are capable of providing for ourselves in times of stress that has driven so many of us into the kitchen to try to provide a basic staple for ourselves: bread.
My husband was the first to explore this alchemy, creating a few sodden lumps of baked bread flour that were perfectly adequate to turn into melba toasts.
Then it was my turn: I am a peasant at heart. I don’t need to make something that looks beautiful to others – just bread that tastes good consistently, created with a minimum of effort and materials -- something I now do regularly.
[Re beauty: decades ago I won a local British competition, besting the baker for Prince Andrew, when the point of the contest was to make the ugliest, most delicious cake for Guy Fawkes Day. And I knew that I would beforehand. But that’s another story.]
What follows are the tips I picked up along the way tailored to my requirements. I do not use a Dutch Oven, as is done in most No Knead recipes: nightmares of third degree burns from a hot heavy pot and my small wrists prevent me from doing so. I also hate disposables, especially lives-forever-in-landfills plastic wrap, so that was also out.
My home and oven are different from yours, so even with the following tips, revel in experimenting! I do. You should also check how true your oven heats: when it reads 450o F, is it really at 400, 430 or 470? Borrow your foodie friend’s oven thermometer and find out. It makes a difference. You need to know how to set the oven so that it actually heats to 450.
Basic kitchen equipment used: two medium or larger bowls, a baking scraper [or equivalent], a 2-cup pitcher, a thermometer probe, a medium cake pan, a big serving spoon, a medium cookie sheet [ideally one that fits with the narrow ends front and back in the oven], a dish towel, and a pot lid that fits just inside the second bowl.
The Speedy No Knead Bread videos from the New York Times (NYT) and JennyCanCook (JCC) were helpful, but my preliminary attempts, with pastry flour, produced dense breads.
So, my first lesson was that pastry flour will not do. There are different types of flours with different levels of protein, and these levels determine how well your yeast garden will grow when making bread. Different countries use different grading systems to describe different types of flours. Did you get all those differences? I finally did – the higher protein flours are bread flours. One commenter noted that she produced her favorite breads with a protein content range of 8-12%. For my birthday I was able to find online a sack of 14% protein organic bread flour that used the French grading system, so it was still available for buyers in the know. I now have fun regularly, depleting that 25 lb sack. With experience, it takes about 5 minutes to prep the mix, and another 5 minutes to fold it into a loaf. The rest is proofing [puffing up the bread mix] and baking time.
In my latest bread baking session, I was able to bake 2 loaves simultaneously: it takes the same amount of baking time. Once cool, I cut one in half and freeze both halves in a bag within another bag, both secured separately with ties. This preserves the texture of the bread best. A half loaf defrosts within an hour, providing instant fresh bread for the next meal. I’m getting close to pulling out that second half at this point.
I settled on the simplicity of the NYT ingredients: 3 Cups bread flour, ¼ teaspoon instant yeast, 1 ½ t salt, 1 ½ C hot-to-touch water, 1 t red wine [suggested in the video]. Hot-to-touch meant not comfortable, but not scalding. Yeast do not like temperatures more than 130o. JCC stressed the importance of stirring the flour before measuring out unpacked but level cups: the extra flour in a packed cup will result in denser bread.
One of her commenters wailed in anguish about what to do with the sticky mass that stuck to everything. Jenny sounded perplexed. It’s something that’s not discussed or shown in the videos. In those magical lands, the resulting mass isn’t sticky.
But a little prep work helps to manage it. Before you mix the ingredients, oil the entire interior of a 2-3 quart bowl. Find a pot lid that fits just inside the bowl. Have a reasonably clean dish towel handy.
How to mix the ingredients? It makes a difference. First stir the dry ingredients well, both horizontally and bottom to top, in a 1-2 quart size bowl. Put a dash of red wine into your 2-cup measuring pitcher. Have your fork ready. Run the water into your dish basin [never waste water, the peasant says] until it gets hot to touch, then fill the 2 C pitcher to the 1 ½ C line. Quickly pour the water all over the flour mix as you start stirring widely with the fork. Keep using wide sweeping or folding strokes that run close to the inside surface of the bowl to capture all the flour along the bottom and sides, until most of the water has been absorbed and a distinct mass has formed. It will be a “shaggy” one. Your garden has started to grow!
The next step is to provide the right growing climate for this garden. Home temperature and humidity varies, and so do the results of baking bread. We enjoy our cool, unheated Berkeley, California house, where mid-60s Fo is a reality until summer arrives. Yeast are very happy growing at 70 Fo or above, but heating our entire house for a yeast colony is absurd. My nephew Theo came up with a great way of assuring a stable happy yeast environment: put the mix, covered, in an unheated oven with the light on. For those in warmer climes, you can just cover and set it on a counter.
But first, turn the shaggy mass into the oiled bowl. Cover the bowl completely with the dishtowel roughly level across the top. Cover the bowl with the pot cover, which forms a seal against the towel and inside of the bowl. Take the extra dish towel ends and fold them over the cover. Turn the light on in your oven, and place the covered bowl on the middle rack. This seals in most of the moisture, just like plastic wrap – it’s probably what your great grandmother did, without creating permanent landfills.
Set your timer for 4 hours. DO NOT turn on the oven – that comes later. [I did say these tips are for dummies, right?] Before you remove the bowl, butter and flour your cookie sheet, and oil your scraper and serving spoon.
At the end of 4 hours, remove and uncover the bowl. Your sticky mass has grown into a blob! It resembles a spineless infant baby, and it needs to be handled just as delicately; the skin needs to stay dry, to avoid sticking to you. Sprinkle a teaspoon or so of flour over the top and lightly spread it with your fingertips over the surface without pressing down. Now, transfer baby to the cookie sheet: as you tip the bowl with one hand, use the other to slide the oiled serving spoon behind its backside, detaching any sticky points from the bowl quickly, as baby rolls onto the cookie sheet.
Grab your oiled scraper and shove it under half the mass, then fold it over itself. Use a little sprinkled flour, if necessary, to keep the surface from being sticky. Rotate the cookie sheet 90o and repeat at least 4 more times. JCC’s video is pretty good at showing the moves. When you get a somewhat oblong shape, gently tuck in ends, and pull the skin over any folds showing on top.
Edge the entire loaf with a narrow heaped line of flour. This will deter it from spreading too much horizontally, resulting in a higher loaf. [Note that the left loaf is higher than the right — I didn’t edge the right loaf during its proofing.] Baby is now ready for its second, short nap. Cover baby with the dish towel and put it back in the lit, unheated oven for 30 minutes. It will rise a little bit more.
NYT uses a Dutch oven to create a moist baking environment for the bread, important for creating a nice crust, but JCC noted you can simply bypass this by creating a humid oven environment. To do this, place a medium shallow pan in the oven. It’s best next to the cookie sheet, but if that’s not possible, place it on the rack below where the cookie sheet is.
At the end of 30 minutes, pull out the cookie sheet with the infant loaf and heat the oven to 450o F. Fill your 2 C pitcher with water. When the oven gets to 450, place the cookie sheet back on the middle rack and pour water into the shallow pan, then quickly close the oven. Bake 30-40 minutes; turn on the oven light to see how things are doing around 20 minutes. The bottoms of my loaves partly lift off the pan and have dark brown crusts when they are ready at 35 minutes. I pull out the sheet and let them cool on a burn resistant surface. You should get a fairly hollow sound when you knock on the loaf, but if you’re not sure, stick the meat thermometer halfway into the middle of the loaf. If the bread temperature is 190o or more, it’s done; take a spatula and slide it under the loaf to detach what little might still be sticking to the sheet. Let the loaf cool there until it’s just warm. Cutting it sooner than that will let precious moisture escape.
No, there’s no dramatic crack on top; my loaves look like smooth, dark brown, oblong river stones [isn’t it sweet how they’re kissing?]. But it doesn’t matter. Check out the photos: the crust is crunchy, the bread moist and chewy, and the crumb -- the matrix of air spaces in the bread -- is a nice mix of larger and smaller spaces. And yes, it tastes just like those artisanal loaves I used to buy. It’s great for sandwiches, garlic bread, or anything else you desire from bread. Bon Appetit!