For those of you who love artisan bread (you know, the kind with the amazing airy texture and crunchy crust) please keep reading. For those of you who don't, stop here.
If you're still reading, and not really interested in making bread because you are trying to cut carbs, I have some thoughts on that. I'm not going to be overly-complicated about it, but I believe anything you can homemake, is going to be healthier for you than a product that's prepackaged and sold on a shelf. There's lots of salt, sugar and chemicals and preservatives and things that can stifle your metabolism. And foods like potato chips and crackers have it too. It's just a fact.
But, if you're like me, you like flavorful bread for a sandwich, or with a good bowl of soup. And instead of buying it, I'm going to be making it as often as I can because this technique is amazing.
I know some of you still aren't going to be eating a lot of bread, and this is good. But be prepared to enjoy it when you do make some of this bread.
My first loaf
The "no-knead bread" craze began in 2006 when Jim Lahey shared his recipe with the New York Times. My personal craze began in November of 2010 when I was inspired for this particular recipe by Miss Becky Pronschinske of Fountain City, who touted her own recipe for olive bread on Facebook one day. Inspired by her description of olive bread, I hunted for ideas to create my own and decided to try this no-knead bread with olives and garlic cloves.
That first loaf, an olive and garlic combo, turned out better than I could have dreamed. I've posted a picture of it along with the olive oil and parmesan we used to garnish the slices. (Don't fail to notice the gorgeous cutting board gifted to me by my generous friends Jody and Troy Ruland. It's been getting a lot of use lately :-)
For those who want to get the hang of the basic loaf before getting creative, I recommend making the basic recipe to start out with. You'll learn a lot that will eventually have you making creative additions to the dough and have loaves that turn out perfect every time.
First, a bit of math
You need to do a bit of math before beginning. When you begin the recipe, you need to calculate and make sure you can be around 18 hours from then (to do a light knead and mix), and 20 hours from then (to bake). Your bread will be done about 21 hours from the time you pour in the water. To have the timing work out just right, I sometimes get the dry ingredients ready to go, then tell my husband what time to add the water. (I showed him how moist the dough should look, and has been doing a great job.)
So, if I want to have bread for supper, say 6 p.m. on Tuesday, start the mix at about 9 pm on Monday, and make sure you're around at about 3 pm to get the final steps going. This is not set in stone - if you show up at home around 4 pm to work with the bread, it's not going to ruin the recipe.
Choose a baking dish
Ideally, use a cast iron pot, a Dutch oven or those fancy le creuset enameled pots. However, I have none of those so you can also use a stainless steel pot, glass casserole dishes, or a turkey roaster (I used the size that accomodates about a 10-pound turkey).
My favorite was the turkey roaster because of the shape it made the bread (ovalish) and because it was lower on the sides and that just made it easier to get the dough in and get the bread out. If you use enough cornmeal you won't need to oil the pan, but I guess you could. Avoid non-stick and aluminum pans.
Another thing I want to try is splitting the batch into two and making two separate loaves in small round glass casserole dishes. I'll bet that would work great, too.
The recipe: Basic no-knead bread
Ingredients:
3 cups of regular bread flour (probably the best way to learn is to start with your favorite brand of standard bread flour)
1/4 tsp. instant yeast OR 3/4 tsp. active dry yeast
1 tsp. salt (sea salt, if you like)
1 1/2 cups of cool water (or more, which you'll likely need)
Gently blend the dry ingredients in a large plastic bowl. Dump the water in. Stir gently with a spoon. The dough should look more like pancake batter sprawling in a bowl than a ball of dough, if that makes sense. If you decide it's not sprawling enough after an hour or so, add more water. You aren't going to ruin this bread by adding water in small amounts.
Cover with a paper towel or cloth towel, and sit in a place in your home that's about 70 degrees. If you peek at the mixture, you should notice some bubbling going on the surface of the dough. It should creep around the bowl if you tilt it, while some should still stick to the sides. If it doesn't - you need to add more water. I have found I always need to add more water to these recipes. I'm not sure why. I have added almost a cup more than what's called for to some of them.
Eighteen hours from the time you added water, you'll begin this next step. Scrape the dough onto a clean, GENEROUSLY cornmealed area of your countertop. (You can use flour, but I greatly prefer cornmeal due to the texture it lends.) Make sure to clear yourself a large enough area to do this - I used a 2' by 18 inch piece of parchment paper to cover my space and my dough, which was pretty moist, almost overflowed the short way. The dough sort of reminds one of "the blob."
Now, having your cornmeal ready, you're going to lift the edges of the "blob" and scoop them onto the top, carefully tossing cornmeal under the edges so nothing sticks. Make sure to use lots of cornmeal! You will need to throw some down every single time you scoop some to the top of the blob, otherwise the wet dough will stick and leave you with a mess. Not a ruined bread, mind you, just a mess of sorts.
I like to use a sturdy silicone spatula for scraping the bowl and then use it to lift areas of the dough and scoop it up onto itself.
So, scoop and lift the dough edges 5 or 6 times, then leave ball of dough on the parchment paper and move the whole arrangement back to a clean corner to rise for another 2 hours. At about an hour and 45 minutes, preheat your oven to 450 degrees so it's ready to go.
Toss some cornmeal down in the bottom of your selected pan. The dough will probably have swelled some more. Sprinkle the surfaces exposed (and the sides) with cornmeal. Just seconds before putting the pan in the oven, gently flip your parchment paper over so the bread dough flops into the pan. generously sprinkle any areas that aren't covered with cornmeal. The dough with sprawl a bit, but it'll be fine.
Put a cover on the pan (or aluminum foil) and bake for 30 minutes at 450 degrees. Remove the foil or cover, and bake for an additional 20 minutes to brown the top.
Using protective silicone gloves, you'll want to get the bread out of the pan as soon as possible. Don't burn yourself! If you did a good job (corn)flouring it will slide right out.
Cool. Slice with a serrated knife. Your first experience with no-knead bread ends in bliss...
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