no-knead bread

Yesterday I performed a bread experiment that turned out very nicely. I made tasty, beautiful no-knead bread in a total of about 5 hours. I got the idea to do this because a few weeks ago when we had attempted to make no-knead bread, we ran into some problems. The dough ended up way too gooey, didn't hold together, didn't rise properly, and took waaaaay to long to cook. When I was looking up something about bread online, someone mentioned not to let the bread over-rise. My theory is that in our hot, humid climate the traditional n0-knead bread recipe allows too much time for rising. So last Friday I mixed some up the night before, let it sit in the fridge all night (to slow down the working yeast) and brought it out mid-morning to sit in the warmer air. It turned out pretty good.


This time I decided to see if I could get the same delicious product in just one day. So here's what I did. I doubled the yeast (from 1/4 tsp to 1/2 tsp). I also had to add a bit more water because my flour was very absorbant. You want the bread to be in sort of a sticky ball/mass, but you don't want clumps of dry flour everywhere...that's too dry. Here's what I did.


12:00pm- mix up 3 cups flour, 2 cups water, 1/2 tsp yeast, 1 1/4 tsp salt. Cover on counter.
~3:45pm-mixture has grown substantially and I see bubbles on the top. I dump it out on a floured surface and fold it on itself a few times. Let it sit for a few minutes.
~4:00pm- preheat oven to 450F with cast-iron pan in it (you cook the bread on a hot pan...kind of a pseudo stone-oven) and shape bread into a rough ball (it's pretty sticky, so it oozes out of shape a bit. I let it rise in a oiled and floured pie plate, so that I can easily flip it into the hot cast-iron pan when it comes time to transfer it. The traditional recipe says to let it rise on a well-floured towel, I think.)
~4:30-ish transfer loaf into very hot cast-iron pan. Put it back in the oven and cook it for 40 minutes. Remove and let cool on cookie rack.

The result: Very tasty bread with a crunchy crust and a very moist, chewy crumb. It may sound shocking to bake it for so long in such a hot oven, but it works...really well. This bread isn't the slightest bit crumbly or dry. The flavour might not be so distinct as when it sits for 12-18 hours to rise, but the whole make-bread-in-one-afternoon is a major bonus, and most people won't note a difference, if there is one. The result was very satisfying.

Nice crackly crust

Beautiful big bubbles on the inside...

In P-town and other places up in the cold north, you might have to either add more yeast or let it rise longer... I think the rising time depends largely on the climate. It might take a bit of experimenting. I haven't tried a whole-wheat mixture yet, but I hope to soon. I also want to try a sour-dough no-knead bread...