Slow Europe

Post updated November 8, 2008. I have been making this bread twice a week for months now and love the recipe. I have come up with my own variation of the recipe (posted below).

One of the things that I love in France, Germany and Switzerland is the bread! A basket of perfect croissants in the morning at a cafe in France, a bakery with at least ten types of fresh baked bread in Germany, the wonderful whole wheat breads served for breakfast in a tea room in Switzerland.

We have great quality bread in North America too - it is not all Wonder Bread here! In Santa Fe, Sage Bakehouse produces artisanal, organic bread.

Jim Lahey, owner of Sullivan St Bakery in New York City, makes good European-style bread. You can purchase it at their store and other NYC locations. A couple of years ago, he published his recipe for No-Knead Bread on his website. A version of his recipe was printed in the New York Times in November 2006 - No-Knead Bread - and (it seems like) everyone in the US started making this bread.

My friend Chris (Slow Travel moderator) posted about it in the Food Forum on the Slow Travel Forums and many Slow Travelers started making bread and experimenting with the recipe (the Food Forum is for paid members only - they have a lively exchange of recipes). I missed all this because I did not read the food forum; I assumed they were always talking about meat, sugar and wine - which I am not interested in. Boy, was I wrong - my apologies to the Food Forum Followers!!

After everyone in the world had made the No-Knead Bread, I finally discovered it. Colleen emailed me that she was making “Chris’ Bread” and I got curious. I have not baked bread in twenty years. Back in my enthusiastic Macrobiotic days we used to “grow” our own sourdough and bake bread - but it never came out that well for me. So I gave up. But we like bread; our usual breakfast is coffee and toast (with good bread from Sage Bakehouse).

For the last few months I have been experimenting with Chris’ version of the No-Knead Bread and another version she sent me a link to - Multigrain No-Knead Bread by Ellen Jackson, on Culinate.

This bread is easy (and fun) to make, tastes great and can be made in many variations. The best thing about this bread is how little yeast is used (for those of us who do not like to eat a lot of yeasted foods) - only 1/4 teaspoon for a medium sized loaf.

Using Whole Wheat Flour

You need at least one cup of bread flour or white flour to make these recipes work. Whole wheat does not have enough gluton and produces a heavy bread. More white flour makes a lighter bread, but whole wheat flour is more nutricious.

Chris and I both use the King Arthur Flours (available at Whole Foods). I use the Organic Whole Wheat. For the white flour I use either the Bread Flour or the Organic Unbleached White Flour (Bread Flour is best).

This photo shows Chris’ flour combination (½ cup whole wheat, ½ cup Semolina, 2 cups unbleached bread flour). The photo at the top of this post shows Pauline’s flour combination (1 cup bread flour, 2 cups organic whole wheat flour).

Amazingly Easy and Delicious No-Knead Bread

by Chris and Pauline

No-Knead Bread recipe adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery and Multigrain No-Knead Bread by Ellen Jackson

• 3 cups flour with extra for dusting
  Chris: 1/2 cup whole wheat, 1/2 cup Semolina, 2 cups unbleached bread flour.
  Pauline: 1 cup bread flour, 2 cups organic whole wheat flour (King Arthur for both). For a lighter bread use half/half or 2 cups bread flour, 1 cup whole wheat.
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt (1 1/2 teaspoons recommended on food forums)
• 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast (if using Active Dry yeast see special instructions below)
• 1 Tablespoon honey or barley malt (if using Active Dry yeast)
• 1 5/8 cups lukewarm water (1 1/2 cup if using all bread flour)
• Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed for dusting

The bread is baked in a 6-to-8-quart heavy pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex - a Le Creuset 7 1/4 quart Round French Oven works well) or the La Clouche clay baker (this is what I use).

Yield: One 1 1/2 pound loaf

Step 1 - Create the dough mixture

If using Active Dry yeast, combine the lukewarm water and honey in a large bowl. Mix together then add the yeast. Let sit for 10 minutes until yeast bubbles (blooms).
In another bowl, mix together flour and salt.
Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.

If using instant yeast, mix flour, salt and yeast. Add water.

Stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap (I use an old plastic bag cut down the side). Let dough rest overnight (at least 12 - 18 hours) at room temperature.

The dough mixture is ready

The dough is ready when its surface is speckled with air bubbles.

Step 2 - Prepare the dough

Lightly flour a work surface and place the dough on it. The dough is wet and you have to scrape it out of the bowl. I use a plastic scraper to get it out of the bowl in one piece.

Working the dough

Dust the top of the dough with flour and fold it over on itself a couple of times (watch how they do this in the videos listed below - they flatten, fold in thirds, then fold in half). Use a pastry scraper in this step.

Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it sit 20 minutes.

Get out a cotton kitchen towel (not terry cloth - I use muslin). Dust it with wheat bran, cornmeal, or flour. The bread will rise in a large bowl, colander or proofing basket lined with the towel or you can let the bread rise on the towel on a flat surface.

The dough rises

Using just enough flour to keep the dough from sticking to your fingers, pick up the dough and gently and quickly shape it into a ball. This part is tricky. Lately I have been taking the four corners and pulling them together in the middle to make a tight ball. Then press all the seams together.

Put the ball into the prepared kitchen towel, seam-side up (it will be turned upside down for baking). If rising on a flat surface, put seam-side down. It looks messy and misshapen. Cover the dough with another flour-dusted towel and let it rise for 2 hours. (You can let it rise for an hour or two longer if the timing does not work out for baking. I like to let it rise for 3 hours.)

Half an hour before it has finished rising, get the oven ready. Place the pot in the oven and preheat to 475 - 500 degrees.

Step 3 - Bake the bread

The dough is ready to bake when it has more than doubled in size and springs back when poked.

Carefully remove the pot from the oven (it is hot!) and put the bread into the pot, seam-side down. This is the tricky part - slip your hand under the kitchen towel holding the dough, so that you are cradling the loaf in your palm. In one sure, confident motion, flip the dough into the pot, with the seam side on the bottom.

It is easier using the clay baker because the bottom has a low rim and you are not dropping the bread from the top of the pot. If using a light small proofing basket, you can turn it over into the baker and dump out the dough.

Put the Bread in the Oven

Cover the pot with a lid, return it to the oven, and reduce the heat to 450 degrees. Bake for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and rotate the pot. Bake an additional 20 to 30 minutes, until the loaf is deeply browned.

When the bread is done the bottom is quite dark (just short of burned) and it sounds hollow when tap it.

The Bread is Done

The bread is done - remove pot from oven and turn out the bread.

Cool on a rack before slicing. It needs to cool for at least an hour. I let it cool overnight and have fresh bread in the morning.

Fresh Baked Bread

High quality, organic, mostly whole wheat bread, fresh from your oven.

Timing the Recipe

You spend about 20 minutes working on this bread, but the time from start to finish is almost 20 hours.

Start the bread at 4pm, it has risen by 8am the next morning (16 hrs), another two hours rising and bake it at 10:15am.

Start the bread at 10pm, it has risen by 2pm the next afternoon (16 hrs), another two hours rising and bake it at 4:15pm or wait to bake when making dinner.

Recipes

• Recipe: No-Knead Bread, by Sullivan St Bakery
• Recipe: No-Knead Bread, by New York Times
• Recipe: No-Knead Bread, by Breadtopia
• Recipe: Multigrain No-Knead Bread, by Ellen Jackson, on Culinate
• Recipe: Le Pain qu’on ne petrit pas, by Chocolate and Zucchini

Videos/Photos

• YouTube Video: No-Knead Bread, by the New York Times. Mark Bittman, a.k.a. The Minimalist, shares a recipe on how to make no-knead bread where the secret is letting the time do the work. He is at Sullivan St Bakery and Jim Lahey demonstrates how to make the bread.
• YouTube Video: No-Knead Bread, by Breadtopia. Another demonstration of making this bread.
• Photos: Slow Europe Photos, photos making my version of the Multigrain No-Knead Bread (slideshow)

Supplies

• From Breadtopia: Bread proofing basket. I line this with a thin muslin towel (cut in half - half for lining the basket, half to put on top when the dough is rising). I found the dough stuck to the proofing basket even when I put some flour in it.
• From Breadtopia: La Clouche clay baker. This is perfect for making this bread. The lower part has a low rim so it is easy to turn the bread over into it.
• Le Creuset 7¼ quart Round French Oven. I used this when I first tried the recipe, but the constant baking was discoloring the pot and I like to use this pot for making soup, so I bought the clay baker. Also, with the high sides, it was hard to flip the dough into the pot.

Final Note (on a LONG post)

Why am I the inexperienced baker posting about baking this no-knead bread when there are far better resources for this? Because I want to tell all my friends about it - now I can just link to this post. And, to show that an inexperienced baker can make great bread.

The ironic thing (and I really mean ironic, with the correct meaning :) ) is that I have been working on this post all afternoon and now it is 8:26pm and dinner is not even started. So I am writing about baking your own bread, but two Amy’s Veggie Loafs are in the microwave for dinner tonight!

If you want to print this post, I formatted my print stylesheet to not display images - so it prints out nicely.

Tags: food

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 7:30 pm and is filed under Bring Europe Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.