Recipe: No-Knead Bread - New York Times
Here’s the recipe for the no-knead bread. Because the Times puts the recipes behind the Times Select shield after a week, I’ve posted the whole thing.
Recipe: No-Knead Bread
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.
1 comment so far ↓
I was first introduced to the original NYT article by a friend, and bookmarked the page. I went back later to discover that the page had been placed in a “subscription only” section of the NYT! Bummer. Then I found this site.
Back to business … I tried this bread recipe, and thought the dough was too thick, so I added about 1/4 cup more water. The dough rose quite well in my 15C kitchen (northern China), and I let it rise for a full 20 hours before folding and shaping. Folding and shaping proved very difficult as the dough was too thin and wanted to slowly run all over the surface. I managed to get it onto a towel coated with cornmeal, and let it rise another two hours. At this point I almost admitted defeat.
Enter the oven and ceramic pot. I heated the oven and pot to 200C (slightly lower than the recipe called for), then poured the dough into the hot pot, put on the lid, and in the oven it went. I was desperately hoping that it would raise somewhat in the pot, hence the slightly lower oven temperature.
30 minutes later, I took the lid off the pot (while still in the oven) and there before me was a beautiful round load sitting in the pot! Another 30 minutes with the lid off, and the loaf was a most beautiful golden brown with a shiny crust.
Waiting for the loaf to cool proved to be the most difficult part of this adventure. I wanted soooooo bad to just tear that loaf open and try the bread, but also knew that it was not fully cooked, and cooling is part of the cooking process. After about 20 minutes, I worked it out of the pot and onto a cooling rack, where my wife started giving it some very serious looks…
…”Let’s eat it now”, she said. I told her that it was still too hot, but she grabbed the bread knife and headed straight for the cooling rack, claiming that she likes to eat bread fresh from the oven (like the rest of us).
OK, the first cut was too early, and some of the sticky, chewy dough stuck to the knife. The crusy was very crisp, and the bread itself was the best I had ever made at home.
You can learn a bit more about my adventure at:
http://beijingbakers.hrdchina.info/index.php?option=com_ricettario&func=detail&Itemid=26&id=6
This bread appears to be incredibly simple to make, and almost impossible to ruin if you stick by the simplest of guidelines. Remember to bake it first with the lid on the pot, as the steam will help the bread rise, and also give the crust the boost it needs to be crispy when fully baked.
This bread can amaze your friends. I’m trying it with sourdough next! Slow rise sourdough … Yum, yum!!
Best regards,
Michael in Beijing, China
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