no-knead bread

Whoa. Dudes. (as the Yarn Harlot would say.....)

This stuff is amazing.

Ok. So. I followed the recipe in the New York Times article. It calls for VERY little handling of the dough. This goes against the grain; generally bread dough gets a LOT of handling. I decided that my point was trying something different, rather than doing the same-old, same-old, so I handled it as little as I thought they meant I should handle it, and I worked almost no additional flour into it.

Only after it was nearly at the end of the second rise did I read some other blogging about this bread. Others had followed the video; I followed the printed text. (Video no longer on the NYT site? I didn't see it today....) The video apparently showed heaping cups of flour rather than level cups..... So, naturally, I was in a dither about whether to add more flour to it and let it rise for another two hours.............

I finally decided Damn The Torpedoes, Full Steam Ahead.

As I don't have the "6-8 quart heavy pan with a lid" called for by the NYT article, I did deviate and follow Foodie Farmgirl's advice that you could bake it on a heavy "stone." (I didn't have one of those, either, but we did find a "pizza stone" for $9 at Target yesterday.)

I put the heavy, unglazed ceramic disk in the oven half an hour before baking time (1.5 hours into the second rise). (The recipe says to put your heavy baking dish into the oven half an hour before you are ready to bake.)

When it came time to blithely flip the dough out onto the stone (sprinkled with bran), things came unglued. Or, rather, it became clear that things WERE glued -- the dough to the towel. Argh.

I tried to be gentle, separating the two, but they were as one. In the end I ripped them apart, and put the stone with its doughy burden back into the oven, hoping that I hadn't been so rough with the dough that it would fall....

(I will draw a curtain over the next ten minutes, in which I struggled to remove the remaining dough from my towel, which, perhaps, is permanently trashed. Dogs left the room, and DH wisely stayed upstairs rather than inquiring into the nature of the problem. All in all, if I can spend 10 min kneading dough, or 10 min futilely attempting to clean bread dough out of a towel, well, you can tell which alternative I'm going to choose!

Ahem.

Anyway.)


The directions say to bake it, covered, for half an hour, remove the lid, and then bake another "15-30 minutes, until [some tasty adjective] brown."

As a big Alton Brown fan, and also as someone who has baked bread products until they were rather dryer than strictly desirable, I had asked for a digital thermometer for Christmas.

Alton says bread is done between 200F and 210F. You don't want it to get to 212, or the water will vaporize and that's why your bread is dry...............

This bread was very nicely browned after about 35 minutes (or maybe 40, but less than 45).


I got out a skewer, pierced the crust, applied the thermometer, and.......
























The thermometer came out somewhat gummy, but I was sure Alton wouldn't let me down. He was right, it was done.


So -- is this bread gorgeous, or what???? The flour is cool-looking, but messy. I ended up having to wash my oven mitts as well as that doughy towel. Next time, the final rise will be in bran or cornmeal, not flour. Or maybe *some* flour, and mostly Something Else.

















As previously discussed, at our house we do NOT let bread cool before slicing.

This bread was very (very) hard to slice, as the crust is hard and the interior is very light and tender.

Again, I ask -- is it gorgeous or what? Even having been squished during slicing.

It is very most certainly Bread, made with no work at all, aside from the aforementioned mess on the towel.

















What did it taste like? Well, suffice it to show the pic of what was left, after two people (who hadn't eaten in at least 3 hours) had their way with it. Less than a quarter is left. If this were for three people, a bigger loaf would be necessary.....


















Would I do this again? You bet. This stuff is like magic. Real bread, no work.

Anyone who knows how to avoid the dough+towel problem, please speak up (guessing that I need A LOT more flour on the towel????? a much smoother cloth??? all of the above????).

This recipe is amazing.