No-knead bread, low spoon adaptation

[kaz]

I come from a culture that puts a lot of weight on bread, grew up in a household where my dad baked some every week and had always been sad about the fact that disability put baking my own totally and utterly out of reach - too complicated! too much washing up! way too many spoons considering cooking pasta was too much effort most days! Imagine my surprise when I discovered no-knead bread, which is so simple I've been able to make it once to three times a week for months. Part of me is still boggling at this.

I know a recipe's been already posted in this community, but this is one I've streamlined for accessibility purposes. Of particular note: you do not need a cast-iron pot or Dutch oven or the like for this, a normal rectangular bread tin is enough - I use a silicone one, which is very light and also easier because it means I don't have to grease it. Less heavy lifting, preparation, and complicated dumping things into very hot vessels ftw.

Ingredients: 3 cups of white flour [you can substitute around 1/2-1 cup for whole wheat]
1.5 cups of water
1.5 teaspoons of salt
1/4 teaspoon dried yeast
(possibly) butter or oil for greasing a baking tin

You will also need: A mixing bowl
Plastic wrap/dishcloth/a plastic bag for covering
Two spoons
A rectangular bread tin
If the bread tin isn't 100% silicone, something like a brush or kitchen towel or the like for greasing
Aluminium foil

Directions: Mix the ingredients together in a mixing bowl with a spoon until you have a dough, then cover. (This should happen pretty quickly, and as the name of the recipe says there is NO KNEADING.) Let rise for 18-24 hours, more like 12-18 if you live in a warmer climate or have a warm place to store it.

Preheat the oven to 230 degrees C/450 degrees F. Grease the bread tin if necessary (i.e.: do if it's anything other than a floppy 100% silicone one), then transfer the dough to the tin - this may be a bit messy as the dough is quite sticky at this point. Cover the tin with aluminium foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for another 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Enjoy!


Notes: I got this recipe from Steamykitchen, although if you google you'll find a very similar version in many places. For the purposes of lower spoon consumption, I've skipped several steps:

- all the recipes I've found work the dough into a loaf on a floured counter two hours before baking. As far as I can tell, this is necessary if you want to get a round loaf, but doing it in a rectangular bread tin works just as well and allows you to skip this step. For a while I was letting it rise for two hours after I put it into the tin, but eventually I started skipping that and the final product didn't taste any different.

- all the recipes I've found also cook the bread in a cast-iron pot with lid that they pre-heat in the oven beforehand. A lot of them talk about how this is very necessary to get a nice crunchy crust, but to be honest I have no idea what they're on about; I've done it this way for months and haven't had any crust problems except because of temperature issues (my oven can't reliably do 230 degrees C because it's only about the size of a microwave and so I have had problems, but anytime I try this at a friend's place with a proper oven the crust ends up fantastic.)

- I also up the salt amount slightly because I think it tastes nicer and using 1.5 teaspoon of salt instead of 1 makes it easier to scale the recipe: for every cup flour you add 1/2 cup water, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/12 teaspoon yeast (you may need to eyeball that last one.)

Other issues:

Most of the recipes I've found say 12-18 or 12-20 hours rising time plus the 2 hours after shaping the dough, but I live a northerly part of Europe, don't really have anywhere above 20 C if that to store the dough, and have had the texture come out wrong when I ventured near 12 hours. For me 18-24 hours seems to be more the right sort of time, and I find that much easier to work with mentally as well: I prep the dough a day or slightly less before I plan on baking. If you live in a warmer climate, you may need to go lower on the rising time.

Usually when recipes call for preheating the oven I skip that step and it still works out, but in this case it *is* in fact important!

The main fiddly bit in this recipe is removing the hot foil after 30 minutes, which is kind of annoying and has led to scorched fingers on my part more than once. Something my dad's suggested which I haven't been able to test because my oven is too small: not using foil at all and instead putting a metal pan of water on the lower shelf. Apparently, the damp inside the oven coming from the boiling water should make sure the crust forms slowly enough for the bread to bake through. Anyone who wants to try this out, please let me know how well it works!

A tip for tidying: the doughy mixing bowl and spoons are absolutely awful to wash up at first because the dough is *really* sticky and ruins sponges etc. What I generally do is just let it dry out for a day or two - when the dough is completely dry it scrapes off really easily.

Comments

[eruanna]

Thanks for sharing this! I love making bread but kneading is often too much for me.

I don't have a metal bread pan right now. I have a stoneware one and a glass one. Will either work with this recipe? When I used to make bread often from my mum's wheat bread recipe, I baked it at 350 F for 30 minutes. Does this recipe need a hotter temperature because the dough is sticky? Just curious. :-) I'd like to try this.

[kaz]

Hmmm. I am Not An Experienced Baker, but: stoneware and glass should work just as well, my main worry would be that you might actually need to preheat those after all, especially stoneware - if the pan heats up too slowly that's going to cause problems, would be my suspicion. But I don't know! So you'd have to try it out and see.

Re: 350 F, that's odd because 450 is the usual temperature I know for any kind of bread and 350 seems too cold. Huh. As far as I'm aware, the high temperature is to get a good crunchy crust to form - essentially, this bread should have a crust much like baguette. If you want something softer, a lower temperature is probably appropriate?

[eruanna]

I have not made many different kinds of bread, so don't know much about usual temperatures. The bread recipe I used to use all the time is for a soft bread that slices well for sandwiches and toast. The crust does not get thick or hard at all. Maybe that's why it bakes at such a low temperature. I dunno. I just made it the way my mother did, and she never said why she did it that way. :)

I like bread with a crunchy crust with soup, though, and hope to try this the next time I make that. Thanks!

[pebblerocker]

A lot of the no-knead bread recipes I've seen are very complicated and require special tools. There's one that was very popular recently that had to be baked on a special flat stone! And with all the different steps they ask for, you may as well be kneading it -- you're definitely not saving any time.

My family's bread recipe is different to yours, but very simple; no kneading, one rising, no tin foil, and the whole process takes two hours, start to finish, including rising and baking. One thing I notice about yours is that there's no form of sugar, which I believed was necessary for the yeast to feed on. I also froth up the yeast in warm water (with treacle) before mixing it with the flour, so you're saving a step there -- though it often saves me the problem of making bread with yeast that's too old to rise, since I can see whether it's alive before mixing it in.

[kaz]

I am not an experienced baker, but my guess would be that what the sugar does for you the long rising time does for me - essentially, that the sugar + frothing up the yeast beforehand sort of kick-starts it, whereas I let the yeast rest for ages so that it feeds on the flour. Both ways seem reasonable! I like it this way, though, because I actually find it really helpful to have a day in between dough prep and baking: if I have to do everything in one day that often ends up being too spoon-consumptive, but one of dough prep/baking bread is okay to fit in most days. The main issue is that there's some degree of planning involved in making sure I start the dough before I need the bread and that I have time to bake the next day, but it's still better than trying to do each after the other. I would still be totally curious to see your recipe, though! :)

I hear you on the no-knead recipes that are super-super complicated. This is genuinely "toss together dough, let rise, shove in oven" but as said I ended up shaving off some things from the original recipe which I didn't think necessary. Surely the point of no-knead bread is that it's easy to make?

I also hear you on frothing to make sure the yeast's alive - so far it's not been an issue, but I bake bagels with my dad at Christmas and we have had sooo many problems in the past with dead yeast. If I start having difficulty with the bread, I'll probably do the same, but so far it's been okay.

[pebblerocker]

That makes sense; if the yeast can feed on sugar it should be able to feed on starch given long enough. And dividing up the work over two days does sound good for low-energy times when I'd otherwise feel too overwhelmed to make bread at all.

I think I have a user-friendly version of my bread recipe somewhere already typed up to be readable by people other than me. I'll have a look and post it for comparison!

[steorra]

If you find your recipe and have a chance to post it, I would be interested to see it.

[pebblerocker]

Thanks for the poke! I found the recipe, just making a few tweaks so it makes sense to brains other than mine.

[st_aurafina]

I've been making this for a few months, too, but in my cast iron pot. I've wondered if it would work in a loaf tin, so thank you! I'm going to give it a try as soon as it's cool enough to think about putting the oven on.

[subluxate]

Oh, excellent, thank you! I miss making bread, and this looks SO easy.

[steorra]

I just tried this, and it is wonderfully easy, and tastes good. It's actually crustier than I prefer, so I hope I can find a way to adapt it to make it less crusty. I also had a minor issue that the bread in the oven rose into the aluminum foil and the top of the bread (before it really turned into a crust) stuck to the aluminum foil and peeled off with it when I removed the foil.

[kaz]

Whoops just saw this comment! I'm glad you're enjoying the recipe.

On the crust front, I think that if you either leave the foil on for a bit longer (try 35-40 minutes, maybe?) or bake the bread at a slightly lower temperature, you should get a less crunchy crust. On the foil front, I sometimes have problems with this too. I think your options are to either get a somewhat larger bread tin so that it doesn't rise all the way to the top or try using a pan of water in the oven instead of aluminium foil (as said I've never tried this out myself! but according to bread-baking lore as recounted by my dad it should work).

[steorra]

I've been experimenting with baking times and temperatures recently, and discovered that if I borrow the baking procedure from pebblerocker's recipe (preheat oven to 180° C / 350° F, bake for 60 minutes), it's not necessary to cover it with foil for part of the baking. (The top crust still comes out quite crunchy.) I thought you might be interested in that further simplification. (And perhaps it would also be good with your small oven that can't reliably reach the higher temperature.) I'll likely make a post at some point mentioning it, but I want to experiment with a few other things first.