Paulchens FoodBlog?!

No Knead Bread

3 April 2011 One Comment

I was invited by a Facebook group called Artisan Bread Bakers to join in and bake the Bread of the Month and this month it is the so called “No Knead Bread”

Cinzia also chose this bread for her hosting of bread baking day: Bread Baking Day # 38 – No-Knead Festival, but allas I was too late with posting since the deadline was already April 1st.

This is what the invitation said:

This month we are going to make a simple artisan bread. This recipe has introduced a lot of new bakers to the idea of great, crusty bread baked at home. If you don’t already bake artisan breads, this may be the recipe to get you hooked.

This is the recipe we were to bake:

Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.

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Hmmms, what shall I say? First it all went well and I had a very soggy and squishy dough, but it went bubbling away like the recipe told me:

bubbly dough indeed!

Even the stretch and fold and the shaping steps went quite well, I divided the dough into two equal parts ’cause I wasn’t sure my pot was large enough to bake the full amount at once.

When the recipe called for a floured cotton towel I hesitated but since everything went so well I decided to give it a go and deliberately floured two cotton towels with flour and placed the shaped pieces on the, after the given resting time I prepared myself to transfer the dough to the preheated pot and … that’s when my nightmare began:

See? this freaking dough was still so soggy it just sticked on the cotton towel. I freaked and ripped off the dough and threw it into the hot pot not giving it much chance to produce anything near a good bread…