No need to knead

I’ve never been a bread baker. I love good bread, but I haven’t had enough patience or enough interest to learn to bake my own. Then two weeks ago, I read Lindy’s post about the no-knead bread recipe written up in the New York Times. Gorgeous bread with only 20 minutes work? Now this I had to try.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the large covered vessel needed for this bread. That problem was easily remedied, though it took a few days for the Le Creuset dutch oven (a gift for my newly remodeled kitchen) to arrive. Once I had the shiny, heavy red pot at hand, I was ready to go.

The recipe for this bread is dead simple. I mixed together 3 cups flour, 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. (The recipe called for 1 1/4 teaspoon, but I wanted to try the bread with less.) I added 1 5/8 cups water, and mixed until the dough came together in a wet, sticky mass. I covered the bowl, and set it in a warm place. (What is a reliably warm place in our drafty old house? Our new front hall closet, which has radiator pipes running through it.) Then I left that dough alone. For 18 hours. Sure, I checked to see that it was developing these lovely little bubbles, but I didn’t mess with it.

After 18 hours, I dumped the bubbly dough out onto a floured tea towel, stretched and folded it into a roundish shape, covered it with another tea towel, and let it rise again for a couple of hours. During the last half hour of the rise, I preheated my oven – with the dutch oven inside – to 450 degrees. After flipping the dough from the tea towel into the hot (very hot!) dutch oven, I popped the covered pot back into the oven for 30 minutes, then removed the lid for the final 20 minutes of baking. Here’s what I pulled out of the oven.

When I moved the loaf from the pot to a rack, it began to crackle audibly. As I watched, tiny fissures opened in the crust. The cracking continued for a minute or more. Nothing I’ve read about the bread mentioned the crackling, but I assume that’s supposed to happen.

The bread wasn’t yet cool, but I couldn’t keep myself from cutting into it. Wow! This looked like bread that I buy from my favorite bakeries. And then I bit in. The texture of both crust and crumb was marvelous, but I thought that the flavor was a bit bland. (I had cut the salt by 60%.) However, when I tried the bread again the next morning, I was pleased with both the flavor and texture, though I decided that the next time I would use a little more salt.

For loaf #2, I used 1 cup whole wheat flour, 2 cups all-purpose flour and 1 teaspoon salt. Again, I mixed the dough late evening, put the bowl into the front hall closet overnight to keep it warm enough, then moved it into the kitchen in the morning. For whatever reason, this dough was softer and floppier, and the resulting loaf larger in diameter and smaller in height, than my first loaf. It also crackled less when it came out of the oven, though the crust is quite crisp. And it’s delicious, too.

This bread is almost certainly going to become a staple around here. I’m looking forward to playing with the recipe: experimenting with different flours, adding seasonings, perhaps getting some sourdough starter from a friend. Will this make me a bread baker? A recipe this simple seems like cheating somehow.

Lindy is collecting links to posts about baking this bread. There’s a wealth of information to be gained from other bakers’ experiences with this method, well worth reading if you’re interested in baking your own.