No need to knead

by thebaking

A bread post.

Bread posts don’t happen very often. But bread itself DOES happen from time to time.

Most often, my bread method involves the dough cycle on a bread machine followed by some time in the oven.

Like here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And so on and so forth.

I first read of no-knead bread while exploring the internets; my mind was somewhat blown.

Without kneading, you can bake a loaf of bread that looks like this:

The bread was soft and airy inside and crisp and golden on the outside.

Just right.

The catch?

There are two.

One: the bread takes time. And two: you’ll need a Dutch oven or other large, oven-safe dish with a heavy, oven-safe lid.

The time thing is of much importance. You have to leave the dough to do its thing in the bowl for 12 to 18 hours. Yes. Twelve to 18 hours.

Before starting the dough, pull out the crystal ball – or just look at your clock or calendar – and figure out whether you’ll be able to deal with baking the bread 12 to 18 hours in the future. Will you be home? Will you even want bread at that point? And so on.

To make a loaf of no-knead bread of your very own, you’ll need:

-the aforementioned Dutch oven or other appropriate dish. I used a four-quart round Dutch oven. The dough probably wouldn’t fit in a smaller Dutch oven.

-a large bowl with an air-tight lid OR a large bowl and  plastic wrap of some sort

-3 1/2 cups all-purpose flower – I used unbleached

-1 3/4 tsp salt

-1 1/2 cups water, room temperature-ish

-1/2 teaspoon yeast – I used bread machine yeast. Bread machine yeast was what I had around. It worked. You could probably use regular yeast.

You will also need extra flour for handling and shaping the dough and a small amount of flour or cornmeal to line the bottom of the Dutch oven before putting the dough in it to bake.

To make the dough for the bread, stir the flour, water, salt, and yeast together in a bowl until they are well-mixed and the resulting dough is somewhat sticky.

That’s it. No more stirring. No-kneading.

Cover the bowl tightly – the goal is zero air getting in or out – and leave it. Leave it alone. At room temperature. For 12 to 18 hours.

After those possibly agonizing 12 to 18 hours, the dough should look rather bubbly with lots of tiny little bubbles.

Before uncovering and handling the dough, start by preheating the oven to 450 degrees with the Dutch oven in the oven. The Dutch oven needs to warm up to the oven temperature.

When the oven is preheated and ready to go, use floured hands and a floured work surface, shape the dough into a ball.

You don’t have to knead the dough: you just have to gather it up and shape it into a ball.

This is no-knead bread.

Remove the Dutch oven from the oven – protect your hands and surfaces from heat and all that – and sprinkle the inside bottom with flour or cornmeal.

Put the dough ball in the Dutch oven, put the lid on the Dutch oven, and put the Dutch oven back into the oven. You can score the top of the dough ball with a knife before baking it if you want to go for that look.

Bake, with the lid on, for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, remove the lid from the Dutch oven and bake for another 15 minutes, until the top of the loaf looks crispy and golden-brown.

Remove the pan from the oven, let cool, and BREAD.

Some writings on no-knead bread that I have seen advise letting the dough rise again after shaping it. I didn’t do that. The ball of dough was already rather large and the Dutch oven I was using isn’t so large. That’s my take. I’m far from a bread expert. But this bread turned out. And I’ve made several loaves since, using the same procedure.

Further internets reading indicates that this method would also work with sourdough. This is of interest.

Anyway,  to review, from an ever-so-slightly different angle than the first picture, this is a loaf of no-knead bread:

The bread was delicious.

No kneading.

Just stirring.

And waiting.

And shaping.

And baking.