New York Times No-Knead Bread

I've been trying my hand at the New York Times recipe for no-knead bread over the last couple of weeks.  My few foodie tendencies have always run toward good bread, good chocolate, and good cheese (sadly, I never drool quite as much over fresh mesclun greens), so I was intrigued to run across mentions of this recipe on various blogs, message boards, and other websites.  It makes a nice crusty European-style loaf, like you'd find at a restaurant or an upscale grocery store

I've now made the recipe three times, and it's turned out fairly well each time.  I've made it with half white whole wheat flour and half all purpose flour, as well as 100% all purpose flour, and that worked well, too.  The first time I added a healthy tablespoon or two of vital wheat gluten, and I think that improved the texture and the rise.

So, here's a photo chronicle of my third stab at this recipe.

The ingredients - flour, water, salt, and yeast - go together really quickly.  I made this at about 7:00 on a Sunday evening.

I set it aside and let it rise until about noon on Monday.  Please forgive the off-white cabinets and white countertops.  New (black) countertops are on the agenda, but behind the basement.

Here's what it looks like after the long rise.  Lots of little bubbles.

After the rise, it's very, very wet.  Check out my fingers, which I just ran through the dough.  I turned it out onto a board with lots and lots (and lots) of flour.  I ran out of all purpose flour at this point, so I'm using white whole wheat flour for the coating and dusting.

The recipe says to use two dishtowels to handle the dough after you turn it over on itself a few times, and to place a floury dishtowel underneath the dough during the second rise.  This didn't work for me - all I got was a crusty dishtowel.  I had much better luck putting lots of flour on my big cutting board, and just covering the top of the dough with a towel.

I let this rise for a while longer than the recipe prescribes.  It rose in place from about 12:30 until I got back from work and the grocery store at 5:30.  As far as I can tell, there were no ill effects.

I used my 8 quart stainless steel stockpot to bake the bread.  It looks really, really dirty on camera.  Wow.  The directions at this point are to turn the dough into the preheated container, bottom-up.  I don't really understand why it's bottom-up, since it was shaped into a ball in the last step.  But I don't think I could transfer it cleanly into the pan, so it's probably just as well.

All done!  I don't think I browned this quite as long as I should have, mainly because I was hungry.  It wound up moister than I would have liked, and the crust wasn't as good as the first batch.

You can see that the crumb is heavier than it should be - it's just too moist all around.  (But still tasty, and miles better than anything from the store.)  The next time I make this, I'll add the vital wheat gluten again, and I'll brown it for longer. 

A great post about the recipe, and lots of links to other blog posts about it, is at Toast, which looks like a tasty blog all around.

Comments

[Tenley]

Wow. I can't remember - were you in 4-H? I would have kicked butt in breads (along with other various baking competitions)....

[Tenley]

I meant YOU would have kicked butt ~ not me! Darn placenta brain.

[Ellen]

Actually, I always bombed out in breads and stuff like that. I had to enter "Citizenship" and things like that in order to get to the state fair. Of course, there was always my award-winning presentation on baton twirling. Can you see it?

[glennae]

Ummm... apparently I don't know anything about bread. I read this post and was like, Wow! Ellen knows a lot of stuff! Thanks again to my trusty widgets, I learned that "crumb" means the soft inner part of the bread. I thought you were judging your bread by tiny little crumbs. What do I know?

Baton twirling? I bet so! I now believe that you, Ellen, can do anything.