Susan: No-Knead Bread

All the shiny little trinkets of temptation
Something new instead of something old
All you gotta do is scratch beneath the surface
And its fool's gold
Fool's gold
Fool's gold
-- The Indigo Girls

I'm not proud of what I did, but there's no point in trying to hide the truth. Late last year, along with zillions of others, I fell head over heels for that New York Times No-Knead bread. After having pulled just one measly loaf out of my new dutch oven (that was purchased specifically to make the bread), I let my faithful companion of five long years, pain au levain, fall by the wayside with nary a backward glance. For weeks I walked around with my head in the clouds and a foolish grin on my face, tossing daisies in the air and yammering on incessantly about my scrumptious new love.

Okay, maybe I wasn't quite that bad, but my sourdough starter did nearly die from neglect during my dalliance. I tweaked the no-knead bread recipe and baked loaf after loaf, taking detailed notes and thinking seriously about adding it to the list of breads we plan to offer from the wholesale bread bakery we're building here on the farm. I even wrote about it on my blog.

As a longtime bread baker I should have known better, but I had it bad. Within a couple of months the drunken infatuation wore off, and I started to wonder what the hell I was doing. Head down and full of embarrassment, I went crawling back to my on-the-verge-of-death sourdough starter and baked up three absolutely gorgeous loaves of my good old pain au levain. The fling was over, and all was forgiven.

I wouldn't say that the no-knead bread turned out to be fool's gold; it was more like discovering it was14 karat gold plate when I had assumed it was solid. We're still friends.

So what was it about this bread that so fully captured my attentions? It wasn't the no-knead part, as I rather enjoy kneading bread. No, it was the same thing that gets people into trouble every day - it was different. Something new instead of something old.

My pain au levain has a thick crust and a hearty, dense interior. This bread had a light crumb full of various-sized airholes and, as Beth put it, "a near-shatteringly crisp crust." I had never baked anything like it. I had also been wanting to try making some sort of "slack dough" bread, such as ciabatta, for quite a while, so the batter-like nature of this dough had me intrigued from the start.

Rather large flaws can be easily overlooked when one is enamored, so it was not hard to ignore the fact that this new bread lacked the lovely, deep flavor of my pain au levain — for a while.

In the meantime, the three of us had decided that A Year In Bread would not be complete without including what had inarguably become a bread baking phenomenon in our recipe lineup. Everybody was baking this bread — which made me start wondering what each of us could do with it that hadn't already been done. Kevin quickly hit upon English muffins, and Beth mentioned something about herbs, though she ended up going in an entirely different direction.

I had already made several changes to Jim Lahey's original recipe, including ditching the dutch oven, but none of them were anywhere near earth shattering — make two loaves at once, increase the rising time, add a lot more salt and enough flour so the loaves would hold their shape without the dutch oven.

Inspiration can come from almost anywhere, including a cluttered kitchen drawer. While frantically rooting around for a rubber spatula recently, three long forgotten recipe cards floated to the top of the mess. Now Kevin was absolutely right when he said in his no-knead bread post that I tend to make the same bread recipes over and over, but I have to admit that my feathers got a little ruffled when he also declared himself to be the only artiste among us. Oh please. In my opinion, anybody who bakes bread from scratch has an artistic streak running through them, especially if they come up with their own recipes. And on those forgotten recipe cards was proof that I had done just that.

The main reason I make the same few breads over and over is because I'm doing what corporate types refer to as "research and development" for our bread bakery. Once I've come up with what I believe is a perfect bread, I need to be sure I can bake up consistent results despite the dozens of variables that affect even the most basic bread recipes.

But back in 2002, before I had even dreamed of opening a bread bakery (actually I had sworn years ago that I would never, ever, ever go into the bread baking business) I used to bake bread for barter on a weekly basis. One of the best parts about this arrangement was that it gave me a reason to constantly try new recipes and come up with fresh ideas. Two of those resurfaced recipe cards listed all of the different breads I had bartered, and on the other was the recipe for what I called Italiano bread.

I love homemade Italian sausage, and one day I decided to see what would happen if I added all of the ingredients in Italian sausage to a loaf of pain au levain. Yum. It took me about three seconds of staring at the rediscovered recipe to realize I had just found the perfect no-knead bread post idea. Then my mind jumped to the grilled cheese sandwich I had once made for Joe using slices from a large round loaf of my plain no-knead bread. He said it was the best grilled cheese sandwich he'd ever had. I started wondering what an Italiano grilled cheese sandwich made with fresh mozzarella would taste like. The creative juices (and the drool) were flowing now.

But my excitement turned to disappointment as soon as I mixed up the dough. It was orange. And not in an appetizing way. There was nothing to do at this point but go ahead and bake it off, while frantically trying to come up with other ideas. Fortunately the finished loaves ended up a completely different color - and were also very tasty.

Overall, I was happy with how this bread came out. My biggest complaint is something I had come across before — giant airholes sometimes hidden below the crust. I mean airholes so big that, well, I think this photo gets the point across. The problem is that you can't tell these giant holes are there until you cut into the loaf. The other loaf came out fine. I did put three slashes in the top of the second loaf, and that may or may not have helped control the airholes, though that isn't why I did it. What the slashes definitely did do was create more colorful and better looking loaf, despite the small tear in the top. I'm not sure why that tear formed; it wasn't due to having too much bloom from not having risen enough, since it rose an extra 40 minutes while the first loaf was baking.

Both Beth and Kevin complained that the no-knead bread went stale quickly. Except for sandwich loaves like my Farmhouse White or Oatmeal Toasting Bread, I never eat room temperature bread. I am a bread snob who demands it fresh from the oven or reheated so that the crust crisps back up. Any crusty bread in our house that won't be devoured within a couple of hours usually goes into the freezer as soon as it's cool.

Things got a little crazy on the farm during this baking project, though, and I ended up leaving the round loaf of Italiano bread in a plastic zipper bag on the kitchen counter for three days before getting around to making that much-anticipated mozzarella grilled cheese sandwich. I don't think the sandwich suffered. Then this morning I toasted up a big slice of the now four-day-old bread in my beloved toaster oven to go with some Swiss chard scrambled eggs. Slathered with butter, it was fantastic.

The bottom line is that this bread is a snap to make and produces a flavorful loaf with a wonderfully crisp crust. The dough is extremely forgiving and will happily work around your schedule. While the freshly baked hunk I had with butter the first night with dinner was good, I think this bread really shines when it is toasted by the slice or used for grilled cheese sandwiches. I thought the fresh mozzarella was perfect. A sprinkling of freshly grated pecorino romano on top of it added a nice touch. After one bite (that photo shoot felt like it lasted forever!) I was thinking patty melt, maybe with Italian sausage.

If it were summer, I would have slipped a few slices of heirloom tomatoes from my kitchen garden into the sandwich. Today I was wondering about homemade oversized croutons and Italiano bread salad. This bread has definite possibilities. Just please don't tell my pain au levain.

Susan's Italiano No Knead Bread
Makes two 1-1/2 pound loaves, three 1-pound loaves, or four baby 12-ounce loaves

This is my basic no-knead bread recipe with the Italian sausage seasonings added in, so if you like, you can leave out any or all of the first 6 ingredients and it should come out just fine. I did increase the flour by about a cup for this version, though I'm not sure if that was due to the pesto making the dough wetter, or the fact that it's a lot more humid now than it was last winter when I was baking this bread so often (our woodstove dries out both the air and my flour). Probably both. Even with the extra flour, the dough was still wetter (slacker) than I remembered it being, and I ended up adding more flour once it had risen to keep it from sticking to the counter and my hands.

Many first time bread bakers complained that the original no-knead bread recipe made a dough that was too wet, but I think this was because they were afraid to deviate from the original recipe and add more flour — which makes sense if you're baking a cake but not if you're making a loaf of bread. Don't be afraid to add more flour to your dough if it's too sticky and unworkable.

No matter what kind of bread I'm making I always do the same thing: use a set amount of water and then vary the amount of flour to make the dough the right consistency. It's always a good idea to start with a little less flour than a recipe calls for and gradually add in more if you need it.

Ingredient US volume | Metric Volume | US weight | Metric
chopped fresh parsley 1/2 cup | 125 ml | 1/2 ounce | 12 grams
basil pesto** 1/2 cup | 30 ml | 1 ounces | 28 grams
chopped fresh oregano 1/4 cup | 60 ml | 1/4 ounce | 8 grams
fennel seeds 2 Tablespoons | 30 ml | 1/2 ounce | 13 grams
ground paprika 2 Tablespoons | 30 ml | 1/2 ounce | 14 grams
granulated onion (or onion powder) 1 Tablespoon | 15 ml | 3/8 ounce | 9 grams
salt 1-1/2 Tablespoons | 22 ml | 3/4 ounce | 22 grams
pepper 1/2 teaspoon | 2 ml | 1 gram
bread flour (approximately) 7 cups | 1600 ml | 2 lbs 3 ounces | 993 grams
instant yeast 1/2 teaspoon | 2 ml | 1 gram
cool water 3-1/4 cups | 770 ml | 1 lb 12 ounces | 794 grams

Pesto
When I have a good summer basil crop in my kitchen garden, I make and freeze enough pesto in ice cube trays and small plastic containers to get me through the rest of the year. Click here for my favorite pesto recipe. When I first created Italiano bread it was summertime, so I used about 1/2 cup of chopped fresh basil leaves and 8 chopped cloves of garlic in the recipe. I almost nixed the idea of an Italiano No-Knead Bread right after coming up with it since there won't be any basil in the garden for months. Fortunately inspiration struck when I remembered a half cup of pesto in the fridge leftover from a recent pizza making party. Using ready made pesto cuts down on prep time, too, as you don't have to peel and chop all that garlic.

Mixing and fermentation
Combine parsley, basil pesto, oregano, fennel seeds, paprika, granulated onion, salt, and pepper in a small bowl.

In a very large bowl, combine about 6 cups of the flour with the yeast. Add 3-1/4 cups water and stir well (I use a wooden spoon). The dough will be shaggy and sticky. Stir in herb mixture until well incorporated into the dough, then add enough of the remaining 1 cup of flour so that the dough pulls away from the bowl when you stir it (depending on your flour, your weather, and about 45 other variants, you might not need to add any more flour). Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and set it somewhere that is preferably between 60F and 70F for 20 to 24 hours. The cooler the air, the longer the rise and vice versa.

Shaping and final rise
The dough will have risen significantly and should be dotted with bubbles. Generously flour your work surface and place the dough on it. Sprinkle more flour on the dough, and with floured hands, fold it over on itself three or four times. The dough may be very slack (wet). If necessary, keep adding a little flour at a time to the dough until it reaches a point where it will hold its shape and not stick to your hands.

As I mentioned earlier, this no-knead dough was the wettest I'd ever made. Once it had risen, I pretty much poured it out onto the counter, then watched in wide-eyed fascination (and slight horror) as it just kept spreading and spreading. But working in a little more flour made it quickly turn from a scary pile of slime to a recognizable lump of dough.

Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 20 minutes.

Note: Alternately, at this point you can sprinkle some dough in the bowl, put the dough back in it, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and place in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours. After 24 hours, my dough had risen almost back up to the top of the bowl and was sending up big bubbles — a little freaky, but a sure sign that it was still very much alive,

Divide the dough into two (or three or four) pieces. Using enough flour to keep the dough from sticking to the work surface and your hands, gently and quickly shape each piece of dough into a ball. I use the method Daniel Leader describes in his wonderful book, Bread Alone: "Use slightly cupped hands to tuck the sides of the dough to meet underneat the mass, rotating the dough as you do so. After a few tucks the dough will form into a a tight ball." For a more oblong loaf, gently stretch the ball into desired shape.

Place the dough seam side down on a cotton towel (not terry cloth) that has been generously coated with flour. Generously sprinkle flour on the tops of the loaves and cover with a damp cotton towel. Let rise for about 2 hours (or 3 hours if you've just taken your dough out of the refrigerator).

After 1 hour, preheat your oven and baking stone to 450F (230C).

Baking
When you poke a finger gently into the loaves and the dough readily springs back just a little, they're ready to bake. (I'm really bad at judging whether dough has "doubled in size," so I never use that method to decide if it has risen enough.)

Generously flour a wooden pizza peel (or an unrimmed baking sheet, or a rimmed baking sheet turned upside down) and carefully overturn one of the loaves onto it (so it is now seam side up), shaking it gently to make sure it isn't sticking to the peel. If there is a whole bunch of flour caked on the top of the loaf, you can carefully brush some of it off with a pastry brush (I now use silicone pastry brushes for everything — easy to clean and no more bristles coming off in your food!).

If desired, quickly cut two or three shallow slits in the top of the loaf (I use a large serrated knife), then carefully slide it onto the hot baking stone. Repeat with the second loaf if it looks like they will both fit on your baking stone at once. Otherwise cover it with a damp towel and set it somewhere cool or in the refrigerator.

This dough is pretty forgiving. When I baked the batch in these photos, I didn't realize until I'd put the oblong one into the oven that there was no way both loaves would fit at once, though two each of either shape probably would have. There was no room in my fridge for the second loaf, and the pantry wasn't any cooler than the kitchen, so I just left it on the kitchen counter while the first one baked. It had plenty of spring left in it and rose nicely.

Continue baking until the crust is dark and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom, about 35 to 45 minutes. I use an aluminum peel to remove breads and pizzas from the oven. Let cool at least 30 minutes before slicing or tearing into it.

If you are planning to toast it, this bread will keep at room temperature in a plastic zipper bag for 3 to 4 days. Otherwise freeze anything you don't plan to eat within 24 hours. Like pretty much all breads, this one freezes beautifully. No need to defrost before reheating--simply place frozen bread in a preheated oven until hot and crisp.

Technorati: Food | recipe | baking | bread | artisanal | artisan | bread baking | no-knead bread | italiano

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Kevin: No-Knead Muffins

Of the three of us hosting this blog, I'm the artiste, while Beth and Susan are technicians. Alternatively, of the three of us Beth and Susan are the dedicated bakers, seeking perfection while I'm the gadfly with the attention span of, well, a gadfly. I prefer the first interpretation but suspect the second is far more accurate.

Nevertheless, one of our goals was to present different approaches to baking bread. My compatriots will make a recipe two or three or more times in a row, tweaking each iteration, until they've nailed it. You can learn a lot from them. Me? I'll make it once, take some notes about what I think worked and didn’t — notes that I often lose — and then not try it again for a year or more if ever. Yeah, gadfly is probably a more accurate description of my approach.

I've been making English muffins for many, many years and although I've produced some superior muffins, I've never produced something as good as what I want. In fact, I've never produced something close to what I want.

Like Beth, I wasn't tremendously impressed with the NY Times No-Knead Bread when I first tried it. It was certainly pretty, but the flavor was on the bland side. and it got stale rapidly. It wasn't suitable for sandwiches, too many huge holes, but given how quickly it became stale that wasn't really an option anyway. Besides, I didn't see that it saved me anything. Kneading only takes 10 minutes and if the long rest between mixing and baking seems like a good idea, then you should know that almost any bread can be refrigerated for 12 hours before baking without harm. In fact, 12 hours in the fridge usually helps the flavor.

Perfect English Muffins

When I was a kid my mother sometimes bought Bay's English Muffins. These gems weren't found with the rest of the breads — or other English Muffins — they were in the dairy compartment near the cheese, eggs, butter, and milk. Exactly were they belonged. I've eaten hundreds, perhaps thousands, of English muffins over the years, and Bay's remains the ideal.

An English muffin is cooked on a griddle — fried, in effect. But it should never taste fried, it should taste baked. And yet, baking wouldn't work. To achieve the proper crust it must be exposed to direct heat.

Split an English muffin open and ideally you should see a moonscape of large and small craters, these craters are perfect for collecting puddles of sweet butter and capturing snags of marmalade.

Bite into one and, unlike most bread — or English muffins for that matter — and you find you need your incisors to tear off a piece like picking up a steak and tearing off a bite. And like steak, you have to chew it.

A truly good English muffin has a noticeably sour note to it. A flavor that blends with something like orange marmalade and highlights a topping such as strawberry jam. Butter is its heart-mate.

Nevertheless, when I sliced into and ate my first piece of this bread I was immediately reminded of my favorite English muffins. It was immediately obvious that the failure in all the muffin recipes I'd tried was that they didn't use a slack dough. A wet, loose dough produces the chewy character and gorgeous nooks and crannies that collect butter and marmalade that, to my mind, is the height of English Muffindom. I don’t know why it took me so long to make that connection. But then, we gadflies aren't known for our intellectual attributes.

I immediately decided I needed to try the recipe as a muffin.

Step one was to get some muffin rings. None of the muffins I'd made in the past needed rings. They were sturdy enough to shape and then rise on their own, but using the no-knead recipe would produce pancakes, not muffins — unless the dough was confined. I ordered some muffin rings and they disappeared into a cabinet until this past Sunday.

On Sunday I mixed the dough according to the recipe except that I rounded off the water to 1 1/2 cups (what's with this 5/8 cup nonsense?) and then followed Beth's suggestion and covered the bowl with plastic and refrigerated it for about 15 hours.

On Monday I pulled it from the fridge and let it warm for an hour and a half. Bad move. Although the dough was still cold, it was too warm for easy shaping. Nevertheless, I pressed on and dusted my aluminum peel with a heavy coating of corn meal, arranged nine rings on it. I dusted my baker's mat heavily with flour and rolled the dough into a cylinder about 12 inches long. Actually, not so much a cylinder as a puffy, sort of rectangular pancake 12 inches long — this stuff is as hard to control as a two-year-old.

No Fear

I didn't screw up my first batch of muffins on purpose. But I did make them knowing I'd screw up. I even suspected some of the ways I'd screw up. But this effort was an experiment. I wanted to learn and that meant I needed to know what could go wrong.

I believed Beth when she said shaping the dough cold was a good idea, but how cold? So I let it warm up some and then tried it. Bad idea. I learned to do it straight from the fridge.

With most breads you let them double in bulk before cooking, but I didn't know how that translated to a slack dough in a ring. So for my first batch I tried several degrees of filling and rising. The conventional wisdom proved correct — fill each ring half way (more or less) and cook when the rings are filled with risen dough.

I also learned that this dough is probably too wet for this purpose, I'll use a bit more flour on my next effort and knead the additional flour by had to understand the texture I want.

I baked my first brick 40 years ago, I'm still learning. Never be afraid of learning.

I divided the cylinder-rectangular-pancake in half and cut that up to form the patties. Not knowing how much rise to expect or plan for I varied the size of the patties I placed in each ring. I also ended up stealing some dough from the second half to fill all the rings. I let the dough rise until the rings were filled and pressing against the plastic wrap I'd covered them with.

I should have anticipated the next problem. But didn't. The muffins stuck to the plastic. Unsticking them was a delicate operation, but I accomplished it and they went onto a griddle lightly brushed with lard. Sadly, they didn’t slide neatly off the foil. Despite the generous layer of corn meal they stuck to the peel too, so I had to use a spatula tomove them from peel to griddle.

Another problem. Although I was careful to use very little fat, I still used too much and the muffins fried. That didn't hurt the flavor, but did hurt the texture of the crust. I made a note to use a paper towel to wipe the griddle after oiling it for the second batch.

Last error. I should have greased the insides of the muffin rings. Actually, it did cross my mind, but for some reason (I'm not sure why) I didn't. I had to run a knife around the inside of the rings to free the muffins, which destroyed their edges.

So, given all these problems, what was the result? A decent muffin. Not great, the crust was too crisp and they were too thin, but the holes I'd desired for so many years were there as was the chewy texture. The flavor? Not so great.

I'd wrapped the unused dough in plastic and put it back in the refrigerator. So the next day I unwrapped it and made a second batch and allowed for my earlier problems. So I:

• didn't allow the dough to warm up at all before forming the patties


• filled the rings half way and cooked them when the dough hit the plastic


• coated peel with both flour and corn meal


• buttered the inside of muffin rings


• dusted the tops of the muffins with flour to at least minimize sticking to the plastic


• wiped the griddle with a paper towel so only a trace of oil remained

So how'd did this change in procedure work out? WOO HOO!

As you can see from the photo, the second batch of muffins is gorgeous. The .8-ounce weaklings became 1-ounce giants.

Perfection though? Nope. And perhaps some difficulties are inevitable. Despite the addition of flour to the cornmeal underneath the muffins I still needed a spatula to get them off the peel, but I accomplished that with much less damage to the muffin. There was also still some sticking to the plastic covering, but, again, much less sticking resulting in less damage to the muffin's structure.

Half of the muffins simply slipped from their rings when I used tongs to turn them over, and the others only stuck because a bit of dough overlapped the ring. They were easily freed.

The crust is still a tad crisper than I'd prefer and although several solutions occur to me, I want to think on it further.

The second batch did taste a bit better, but I can put that down to the longer stay in the fridge and to more air in the muffin. The flavor wasn't significantly improved. This dough is bland — and doesn’t keep well.

But I learned I want a slack dough. I learned (thanks Beth) that it should be formed cold. I learned how to use muffin rings. And I learned that choosing a good marmalade for your breakfast muffin is essential. Actually, I already knew that last one.

Technorati: Food | recipe | baking | bread | artisanal | artisan | bread baking | noKnead bread | english muffins

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Beth: noKnead Bread

As the winter of 2006 was closing in, a lot of people were discovering an old approach to making bread. Writing in the New York Times, Mark Bittman described how to make a "no-knead bread" using a very wet (or "slack") dough that is allowed a long, slow rise and then baked in a covered, preheated dutch oven. The results were impressive: bread with a beautiful rustic, open crumb and a near-shatteringly crisp crust.

With 78,000 Google hits for "no-knead bread" there are no doubt thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of people who overcame their fear of yeast, baked their first loaf of bread, and were thrilled with what they created. They have reason to be proud too. The pictures are gorgeous, and more than a few people describe the crust singing as it cools, which is always a good sign.

I think this is great. Anything that gets people in their kitchens, particularly into scary territory like yeasted bread, is wonderful. Every time I come across a web site where someone has a picture of their very first loaf of bread I smile. More bread bakers makes me happy.

As someone who has been baking bread regularly for decades, however, this recipe is not quite such a huge revelation. I figured out long rise, cold-fermented, slack dough a long time ago and know how to reliably get crispy crust. Perhaps understandably, I was not in a huge rush to try the recipe. In fact, it took me all the way until February to try it, and then I only did it because Susan twisted my arm. Really hard.

The magic behind NoKnead Bread

Reliably turning out great bread at home requires you to master a technique or two and control the proofing and baking environment. This recipe shortcuts a few of these critical aspects of making good rustic bread, making it easier to create a loaf you will be happy to eat fresh out of the oven. While you will probably end up using variations on the original recipe, there are a few things to keep in mind about why this approach works so well:

The rustic open crumb of artisan bread requires slack dough, which can be a hassle to knead and work with. Treating the dough like a batter takes care of that, while the long rise allows for slow, but adequate, gluten development.

Concentrated bottom heat gives the bread more oven spring (rise) and a crispier crust. Baking stones, not preheated dutch ovens, are the usual solution to this problem, although it doesn't deal with the next thing...

Home ovens don't provide the steamy environment required for truly great bread—hence the steam pans, ice cubes, spraying water in the oven for the first few minutes of baking, and so on. By trapping the dough's moisture in the covered dutch oven, you can skip the initial steam creation rituals and let the dough steam itself.

I baked two batches before I wrote about it on kitchenMage and then I wrote: So, what do I think? Well, truth be told, it is great food blog bread. It is very pretty, no doubt about that. Visibly crisp crust. Beautiful open crumb. Yep. That's some gorgeous bread. Photographs beautifully, too. It is also dead simple to produce bread that pretty. The slack dough, long ferment, and baking method combine to make a very forgiving recipe. Served still warm with a slather of butter, it's an impressive loaf, especially for someone who seldom, or never, bakes.

That's not bad…but then I had to go on: Well, except in one aspect. It tastes like...not much. It's not even bad enough to be notable. Flavorless, gummy, and an hour out of the oven the crust starts to toughen.

Ouch! (but wait there's more...) I summed up this bread thusly: Bread to make you believe in the Atkins diet.

So clever. So witty. (So should have shut up.)

So when Kevin and Susan said we absolutely, positively, had to do noknead bread for this site I was a bit nonplussed. If nonplussed means freaked out. There was whining and wheedling, bitching and moaning, and all sorts of carrying on.

I called an executive meeting, at which they reminded me that two was more than one and I was outvoted. I begged and said they could call me a snob on the site if they wanted. They laughed.

Worse, they made me go first!

Bummer. To quote a teenager I know, "sucks to be me..."

This forced me to seriously examine what I didn't like about the recipe and find a way to fix it. So, what was wrong? Well, from my perspective, the bread has three significant down sides:

• Boring, bland, blah. All white flour meant the bread lacked flavor. The salt in the recipe needed to be doubled. Did I mention the boring white flour?


• The long rise at room temperature gives the yeast time to digest a lot of the sugars and enzymes that are being broken out of the flour, reducing the flavor. A lot.


• The covered baking dish often results in a moist, somewhat gummy interior, especially in the center bottom.

The second was easy to fix. I use cold fermentation for bread all the time; clearly this would have to be done that way. A bit of experimentation was all it would take to find the right balance of time and temperature.

The last seemed to be a matter of less covered baking time, maybe with adjustments to time and temperature. (hmmm, time and temperature, I detect a theme…)

The first of these, however, offered me one of those double edged opportunity/danger situations. A quick search online demonstrated that there were already been a lot of variations on this recipe, some more successful than others, in the wild. Herbs, sourdough, chocolate chip (hmmm, chocolate, that helps anything!), mushrooms, cheese… You name it, someone has tried it. Interesting, but this could take a long time and much experimentation and I was on a deadline.

Closing in on the date for this post, I was still playing with ideas in my head, not in my kitchen where I needed to be, when I came here to check on comments and found inspiration instead.

You see, two of our most dedicated bakers, Judy and oopsydeb, were talking about Farmgirl's Oatmeal Toasting Bread—one of my favorites—and that made me think of my cinnamon swirl version of Susan's recipe and one thing led to another and I finally went to the kitchen and seven experimental batches later, I give you…

kitchenMage's little bit Twisted, kinda Nuts, noKnead Oatmeal Toasting Bread
(with apologies to Susan)

ingredient US volume | Metric Volume | US weight | Metric
oatmeal 1/2 cup | 118 ml | 2 ounces | 56 grams
brown sugar 2 tablespoons | 30 ml | 1 ounces | 28 grams
boiling water 1 cup | 236 ml | 8 ounces | 224 grams

cold water (or ice) 3/4 cup** | 177 ml | 6 ounces | 168 grams
whole wheat flour 1/4 cup | 59 ml | 1 ounce | 28 grams
bread flour 2 1/4 cups | 532 ml | 10 3/4 ounces | 300 grams
instant yeast 1 1/2 teaspoons | 8 ml | scant 1/4 ounce | 5-6 grams
cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon | 3 ml | 1/8 ounce | 2-3 grams
nutmeg 1/2 teaspoon | 3 ml | 1/8 ounce | 2-3 grams
vanilla extract 1/2 teaspoon | 3 ml | 1/8 ounce | 2-3 grams
salt 2 teaspoons | | 3/8 ounce | 10 grams

Filling
nuts, chopped 1/2 cup | | 2 ounces | 56 grams
cinnamon sugar A few tablespoons or so…it's sprinkling, how exact do you want?

**To measure ice without a scale, pour 2 cups of cold water into a 4 cup measuring cup and add ice until it measures ~2 2/3 cups. Smoosh the ice cubes flat with the water surface, it should then measure 2 3/4 cups. Adjust until it does. Or buy a scale already. Really!

Mixing and fermentation
In a mixing bowl, combine oatmeal, brown sugar and boiling water. Stir well. Cover bowl with clean towel and let cool.

This mixture needs to be no warmer than room temperature before you can continue. How you achieve this is a bit different depending on whether you are using ice or cold water:
Cold water—let the mixture cool to lukewarm, 30-45 minutes and add water.
Ice—wait 10 minutes, add the ice and stir until it melts.

Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until well combined. The dough will be thick enough to scoop a large spoonful and have it stay relatively intact—it's very similar to the texture of well-cooked oatmeal.

Cover the bowl and let the dough rise until doubled in bulk. (This took 3 1/2 hours in my 70° kitchen.)

Refrigerate dough overnight (at least 6 hours).

Shaping and final rise
The next morning, remove dough from the refrigerator and let it warm on the counter for an hour or two. It will still be cool to the touch.

While the dough is warming, chop nuts and mix cinnamon sugar if you don't have some on hand (my standard cinnamon sugars is ~3 parts each brown and white sugar to 1 part cinnamon). Also, cut a piece of parchment paper and place it in the container in which the dough will rise.

Flour the counter and scoop dough onto it.

The filling is layered into the dough with two tri-folds — like folding a letter to go into an envelope — first in one direction, then the other. Start by nudging the dough into something resembling a rectangle. Sprinkle the dough with a quarter of the nuts and cinnamon sugar. Fold one third of the dough towards the middle, sprinkle with a little more of the goodies. Fold the other third over.

Let the dough rest for a few minutes. It should relax back into a rectangle, more or less. Rotate the dough a quarter turn and repeat the topping process.

Gently place the dough on the parchment and let rise until doubled in bulk. This may take a long time (4-5 hours).

When the dough is about half-risen, put the covered baking container in the oven and preheat it at 450F (230C) for at least 45 minutes, although an hour is better. (I used a 2 1/2 qt, 7 inch wide Calphalon saucepan.) If you have a baking stone, place the pan on the stone to heat.

Baking
Once the dough has doubled in size, place it in the baking pan by lifting the corners of the parchment with the dough on it. Lowering it into the baking pan and cover. Bake for 30 minutes.

Reduce oven temperature to 400F (205C) and uncover the pan. (If you have a stone, remove the pan from oven and finish baking on the stone.) Continue baking until crust is dark brown and the loaf sounds hollow when thumped on the bottom, approximately 30-40 minutes. An instant read thermometer should register 210F (99C). Let cool completely on rack.

Not surprisingly, this makes excellent toast.

Technorati: Food | recipe | baking | bread | artisanal | artisan | bread baking | noKnead bread | oatmeal bread

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