You may already know this, but you can actually make bread without kneading it. It is a big, gloppy mess, but still — you don’t have to stick your fingers in there, or do any work.
People love this idea. There’s actually a cult of no-knead bakers out there, inspired by a New York Times article that hit the Internet in 2006 that called for making a bread dough, and leaving it untouched for 20 hours. If you google “no-knead bread,” you’ll find videos about how easy it is. Blog posts. Even one set of photos where the bread’s made by a 4-year-old boy. (Who is extremely adorable.)
I never really got into the idea — not kneading takes all the fun out of baking bread, for me — but recently, after Crayton and I made grilled cheeses with the hangover potato bread, I started thinking. What would be the perfect grilled cheese bread?
No-knead bread is a crispy, almost artisan-style loaf, because it’s baked in a pot. So, envisioning gooey cheese stuffed between two dark-brown bookends, I called my friend Julie, owner of a large, 6-quart Le Creuset dutch oven. “Do you know about no-knead bread?” I asked her. “Huh?” she said. She’d never baked bread before, but being a curious, cool woman, she was in in a heartbeat.
Later I realized that 20-hour bread is probably not the best choice for two girls with busy schedules. We let the bread rise overnight, and in the morning, we plopped it into the pot and let it rise again, while we took a quick trip to Costco. Costco segued into Chedraui, and a quick trip turned into a three-hour tour.
I fretted a little over the bread — what if it had risen too much? What if it had fallen back on itself, and we’d have a dense rock of a loaf? — but I had no control over it, so I tried to put it out of my mind.
When we got home, the bread looked bigger, but not necessarily taller. It had swelled across the pan, like I imagine my hips will do by the time I’m 45.
We’d wrapped the bread in a floured kitchen towel, and planned to turn it out into the pot and bake it, like the recipe said. However, when we tried to unwrap it, the top portion of the dough clung to the towel. I hadn’t used enough flour.
Finally we got the bread in the oven, and about an hour later, we had a nice, dark-golden crust. But the loaf hadn’t risen much. It looked like a lumpy chair cushion, maybe twice the thickness of your average focaccia. As for the taste — not bad. Lots of air bubbles. Chewy crumb. Crisp crust. If only it was thicker, it’d make a hell of a grilled cheese.
There were lots of things that could have gone wrong here — I’d left our window open overnight, accidently, during the first rising in the oven, which could have made the house too cool; we’d been at Costco for hours and the bread could have risen too much; the whole floured kitchen-towel debacle, which killed about 1/4 cup of our bread dough.
I have learned, however, that I’m sticking to the kneading in the future. Why spend two days making bread, when you can do it in three or four hours?
My grilled-cheese bread quest isn’t over.
Hi Lesley!
I experimented with bread baking last winter while I was working from home. I had LONG been very nervous about bread-making. I had really good luck with Mark Bittman’s approach, and also America’s Test Kitchen’s Best Recipe approach (which calls for a little bit of kneading.)
I always though bread was super high maintenance, but after reading Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, I was able to get a good routine with it.
The key is really to use high-protein flour. You don’t have to, but it does offer a better texture.
Another key is to maintain a steamy environment. I used ATK approach of pouring steaming hot water into a oven-proof pan and placing in in the oven at the same time as your bread goes in. (Just make sure there’s enough water in the pan.)
Ps: Mark Bittman is a fan of using the food processor, which also doesn’t require much kneading and is done super fast. No proofing, no worrying about the water temperature. Just give it several hours to rise and the flavor that develops will be amazing.
Thanks for the tips Suzie! Yeah, I love the steamy environment thing… I’ve done the hot-water-pan thing before. I’ve actually used it while the bread is rising, because the environment inside my house tends to be cool and dry. I didn’t do it this time, because I was unsure how it would affect the bread cooking in the pot. And actually, I like proofing bread, and sticking my hands in it. I think I just need to be around while it’s rising, because I still don’t have a feel about how the altitude affects the rising times. Sometimes it’s been a lot quicker, and sometimes not. If you have a favorite bread recipe, I’d love to see it!
I’ll look up Bittman’s recipe for you at home. He uses very little yeast, which allows it to rise very slowly. But there may be more advice for altitude in your situation. His approach allows you to be gone most of the day, which is very handy.
I also tried his sourdough bread, which was tasty, but I lost control of my starter when things got busy.
Dutch Oven.
You should check out Patzcuaro blogger Constantino’s sourdough. I have made it multiple times and it is awesome.
http://ranchocanyoncook.blogspot.com/2009/06/simple-sourdough-bread-real-simple.html