Stuart's Soliloquy to the void

Just plain bread

Sunday, October 24th, 2010 | Cooking

Once in a while I find myself in the rather annoying situation of waking up and realising that we are out of bread, there’s no real good alternative for lunch, there is no poolish ready for use, and the stand mixer is in the dishwasher and not at all ready for use. At that point, I could, of course, do a bunch of kneading myself, but that gets rather gooey and unwieldy with the highly hydrated doughs I prefer to make, so, enter the no-knead process…

The basic process is this: mix everything and incorporate the ingredients, then walk away from it for a while. You could just leave it like this for a good 16–18 hours and the dough will magically have kneaded itself, but from waking up until lunch, 16 hours seems a bit unrealistic. Instead, you can gradually strengthen the gluten strands by folding the bread, say, every 30–40 minutes or so for 2–3 hours. After that, we can shape the bread, let the loaf proof for about five quarters of an hour, then stuff it into the oven at a good 240°C for 30–35 minutes, and finally let it cool completely before slicing the bread. That last part is usually the most difficult part of them all, but like a good roast, you will not get a full, rich flavour unless you let it rest (unfortunately bread usually takes more than 20 minutes to rest, it’s more like 40–60 minutes).

That is what 500 g flour, 10 g salt, 14 g fresh yeast, and 360 g of water will give you when folded every 30 minutes for 2½ hours, and otherwise following the procedure above.

A lovely creamy crumb, and a wafer-thin, flaky crust. In a professional bakery, the ovens are able to take in water and turn into steam in certain intervals inside the oven, which keeps the bread moist and prevents the crust from forming prematurely—home bakers are, typically, not as fortunate, so we have to make do with alternative methods of getting those thin crusts. A lot has been written on the topic: people throw in ice cubes when they load the loaves, they put in wet towels that give off steam, they put a pan of cold water below the plate with the breads on, etc., etc.; In my opinion, this is all much too much work (plus the ice cube thing might damage the oven, crack the glass in the oven front and whatnot, plus it interferes with the bottom heat for my baking stone). Instead, I take some cold water from the tap, and place it in the cup of my hand and slowly drizzle it across the unbaked loaves between my fingers, then bake it just like that. This, of course, keeps me from doing fancy flour-patterns on top of the bread, but I didn’t really plan on doing those in the first place.

At any rate, for a fairly quick bread (yes, my quick breads take in the vicinity of 6 hours), it has a nice taste, but not as pronounced a taste of wheat as the 12+ hour breads do. But, at least, there was bread for lunch.

Tags: baking, bread, white bread

No comments yet.

Leave a comment