No-Knead Bread

Although it’s not particularly keto-friendly, I made a loaf of NY Times No-Knead Bread (fine-tuned versions):

No-knead bread - loaf
No-knead bread – loaf

Wow, that tasted good and definitely added a bit more pep to my morning bike rides!

The receipe produces a rather wet lump of dough in the mixing bowl:

No-knead bread - mixed
No-knead bread – mixed

It looks much more promising after rising for 18 hours:

No-knead bread - 18 hour rise
No-knead bread – 18 hour rise

The recipe calls for a large heavy pot, which produced a long-disused nickel-plated cast iron Wagner Ware No. 8 Drip-Drop Roaster from the attic:

No-knead bread - Wagner No 8 Roaster
No-knead bread – Wagner No 8 Roaster

I scrubbed out the interior and used it as-found to good effect. After the cookin’ was done, a few hours of electrolytic stripping seemed in order:

No-knead bread - electrolytic pot strip
No-knead bread – electrolytic pot strip

The lovely nickel plating on the outside of the pot didn’t need stripping, but the interior is once again a nice flat black surface and the next loaf should drop right out …

4 thoughts on “No-Knead Bread

  1. I use that recipe, too. It is my favorite. I love the great crust and chewy crumb.

  2. I started a couple years ago with a recipe from one of Lahey’s books ( ‘My bread’ and ‘Sullivan Street Bakery Cookbook’).
    The NYT recipe has 80% water, the book only 75%. Reason given: Home stoves don’t reach as high a temperature as a nice brick oven, the bread will stay moister.
    I started with the dutch oven method, but found it a pain. Also, I don’t want to bake every day.
    I now bake three loaves at once, store two in plastic bags in the fridge and reheat/crisp them as needed. For baking, I use dollar store cake pans (like pie pans but steeper rim) and a flat pan that gets a cup of water at the time when I put the breads in the oven.
    The mix: 1000g flour (750g wheat+ 250g whole wheat), 750g luke warm water, 5g yeast (2.5g if you do all white flour), 10-12g salt (Lahey would do 20g).
    Let rise overnight (depends on the temperature of the water and the air, right now about 10 hours, use less yeast if you want a longer rise, use warmer water if you want to speed it up). Fold three balls, put them in the greased and floured cake pans, let them rise in the warm oven for 1-1.5 hours, till they start a nice dome. Put on counter, preheat oven for 15-20 minutes. Anywhere between 480-540. Add bread and water and bake on high heat. After 10-15 minutes check for color and reduce heat if needed, after 18-20 min. from start remove loaves, shake them out of the pans, and put them back into the oven to brown the bottom part, maybe on a lower rack for another 15 minutes or so. You can increase heat for a couple minutes to brown the bottom, but after that the heat should be turned down, so they don’t burn.
    Gives me three nice loaves, and I have to bake only twice a week. Preheat days aren’t as nice as fresh-bake days, but much nicer than store bought days, which I can avoid almost entirely.

    1. Back in the day, my much-tinkered bread recipe (from The Tassjara Bread Book) required entirely too much hand labor. I just tried a whole-wheat no-knead loaf which came out, shall we say, durable and some fine tuning is definitely in order.

      One 500 g (-ish) loaf lasts us a week, so I freeze half and try to avoid temptation on Baking Day. Yum!

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