As I threatened or promised, I made another loaf of no-knead bread. I also threw together some chimichurri, and I fried up some shabu beef (seasoned only with salt and pepper). The result was some awesome sandwiches even if the bread was a wee bit heavier than, say, focaccia or ciabatta. I think I'm going to try using a loaf pan next. The result will be conventional slices, but it might be worth it all the same.
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| bread with two coats of butter |
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| shabu beef |
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| the sammich |
My Korean coworker ate some of my bread but didn't do a sandwich. I offered my boss a sandwich several times, but he demurred. All the more for me, then!
It's very good bread (I take no credit for this: it's an idiot-proof recipe), but I might need to figure out how to make the crumb a bit lighter. More gas from the yeast (longer rise and/or more yeast)? Less hydration/more flour (or would that make things heavier?)? Not that I'm in a hurry to change this recipe; it's only a thought. For the moment, I'm very happy with this, and even without changing the ingredients, there are other factors I can change, e.g., baking time/temperature, using a loaf pan, etc. Stay tuned for more shenanigans.
I'm actually wondering how this might do as a pizza crust.
I've been experimenting myself and also reading up on high-hydration doughs. There is a bread called Pan de Cristal (aka "glass bread") that is 100% hydration, and it appears to be essentially the recipe you use (more or less--if I remember correctly, your recipe is only 98% hydration or some weird figure, for some reason). The difference is in the "kneading" process. I use scare quotes here because you can't really knead a 100% hydration dough. Instead, it is a cycle of repeated folding and resting, followed by a long (I forget how long exactly) proof.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing about your recipe: Because it is idiot-proof, you will be able to get a good bread out of it with little effort. But if you want to get the absolute best results, you're going to have to do some kneading (that is more than the folding you currently do--again, I don't remember how much folding is involved, and for some reason I can't find the recipe in my email even though I'm pretty sure you sent it at some point). Definitely don't go for lower hydration, though--that will make the crumb more dense.
At some point I am going to have to try the Pan de Cristal for myself--maybe some weekend when I have some spare time.
Pan de Cristal came up as an algorithmic suggestion on YouTube a while back. The thumbnail showed bread with a big, bubbly crumb. Good luck with that.
ReplyDeleteI use talk-show host Jenny Jones's recipe, but I quickly discovered that her recipe is a generic one found all over YouTube if you search for "no-knead bread." (This is similar to when I found the idiot-proof pie-crust recipe that is now my go-to way to do pie crusts. There's a generic template from which spring all the variations. The more generic the recipe, the more idiot-proof it is, and while that keeps me in the shallow end of the kiddie pool, I'm easy to please and not very motivated to try super-complicated or super-ambitious ways to make breads or pie crusts.)
ReplyDeleteJenny Jones's recipe is here.
Ah, that must be why I can't find the recipe in my email. Anyway, I was right: 98.3% hydration. Of course, that's what happens when you measure by volume rather than weight.
ReplyDeleteLooking back over the recipe now, I'm thinking that 35 minutes is way too short for a proof--I proof my loaves for an hour. I also realized as I was reading the recipe that I had forgotten what a difference a pizza steel makes--if you want a loaf with real oven spring, you really need to hit it with high heat as soon as it lands in the oven. I was reminded of this because the recipe states "NO DUTCH OVEN." (OK, Jenny, geez. No need to shout.) There really is no substitute for a baking stone or a pizza steel... but if you do have a Dutch oven, I would recommend trying that. Heat the Dutch oven in the oven until it's hot and then drop the dough (on parchment paper) into that.
I can understand not wanting to get into super-complicated methods, etc., but it only seems super-complicated in the beginning. It's really just a time investment, plus a few techniques that you pick up along the way. One day I will lure you out of the kiddie pool, I promise!
And I am sorely tempted to try the Pan de Cristal this weekend. I don't know if I'll have the time, though. We'll see. When it does happen, I will document the process.
For what it's worth, the initial rise is three hours. The second rise is 35 minutes. Or were you taking the first rise into account when talking about the second rise?
ReplyDeleteAs for more ambitious breads—who knows? I might build up to doing something more complex. Anything's possible.
I do the three-hour ferment as well, so I discounted that in my calculations. If you're just talking about getting an airy final loaf out of the oven, it's the final proof that matters. Although I did go back and read a little more from Jenny, and she says that the dough is not going to rise that much anyway. I suspect that this is because it hasn't been kneaded and thus doesn't have the same gluten structure that a kneaded dough would. So that final proof time might not matter much in the end.
ReplyDelete