Hello friends! From me to you an express article, because I was going to write about something else, about master classes, but the debriefing of no-knead bread suddenly became relevant. When I published, I sincerely thought that bread couldn’t be found simpler and that it would be simple and understandable to everyone who took it on. On the one hand, that’s the way it is, what’s complicated: no need to knead, no need to fold, no need to pull the gluten windows, the dough kneads itself while you sleep. Therefore, they began to actively bake it, when suddenly it turned out that many things were not so simple. This recipe turned out to be a litmus test for bakers because it showed all the weakest points in the bread! Let's look at your mistakes.
I saw this:
The bread looks nice, but in the cut there is something incomprehensible: a dense crumb, swollen in places with large, coarse pores. What is this and why does it happen? This picture (like other “pictures” that will be below) is typical for many wheat, not necessarily without kneading, therefore, while reading this debriefing, immediately remember the situations when you had such a result.
Let's analyze: the crumb is dense - this is a weak loosening, the main reasons are either weak yeast activity in principle (weak leaven, then the taste will have an unpleasant sourness or a completely bland taste), or errors in the preparation of the dough. The majority will determine that it was not sufficiently proofed, and in some ways this is true (more precisely, this is already a consequence), but if you have an a priori active starter, the reason is different. Before the dough is formed, the dough ferments for several hours (two or twelve, depending on the amount (%) of leaven and temperature conditions of fermentation), and the internal structure of the bread begins to form through loosening at this stage. As a result of the activity of starter yeast, the dough is filled with gas and air bubbles. In a good way, you should cut and shape well-fermented, gas-saturated, fluffy dough, soft, but not flabby (when flabby is already a hard stop). The dough loses some of its gas at the cutting stage, some during shaping, but then during proofing, loosening occurs very actively. If the dough has risen well at the fermentation stage and has become fluffy, the proofing will be rapid (1-2 hours depending on the temperature and composition of the bread, and in the case of standard recipes, it will be twice as fast as fermentation). But, if the dough did not rise well, if you did not monitor its condition, but acted solely on the recommendations in the recipe (two hours - so two hours, ten - so ten), the proofing of your bread will take a lot of time, exactly how long depends on the temperature, and how well the dough has risen during the fermentation stage. Now look what happens:
INWe took poorly fermented and weakly loosened dough for cutting (you never know, the starter was weaker, or the temperature was lower and it did not have time to rise within the time specified in the recipe), shaped it and put it to proof. The duration of proofing, according to the recipe, is one and a half to two hours. This is if the fermented dough rises well, of course. But it didn’t fit well for you, you thought: okay, this will do! They clocked exactly two hours and began to heat the oven. The bell rang, the oven was hot, you immersed it, cut it, baked it, and what comes out is dense bread with coarse pores. To be sure to understand whether the dough has risen, knead in a transparent container so that you can see the loosening. If you kneaded it in an opaque bowl, try to evaluate it visually and tap on the bottom of the bowl; if the dough has risen, the sound will be empty and three-dimensional at the same time, as if you were knocking on a ripe watermelon.
We kneaded the dough and put it in the refrigerator.There were several situations like this and I immediately had a question: why put it in the refrigerator when the recipe says 20-22 degrees? If you remember, the less leaven (dough) in the dough, the longer it ferments and the dough, which should ferment in a warm place for 10-12 hours (or even more), will not have time to rise for the same time at a low temperature!
Too sticky when cutting.Considering that the stated moisture content of the dough in the recipe is 75%, it may well seem sticky, especially to those who have not worked with wet dough much; 75% is the moisture content of the ciabatta and tartine from Robertson's first book. But, if you have experience taming wet dough and it's still sticky, it may have over-fermented or started to break down because you used weak flour. In general, the technology of no-knead bread with long fermentation not in the cold may well give such stickiness, this is normal. If you absolutely cannot cope with the dough, then unload it into the mold, let it rest and bake to your health (well preheated oven to 240 and with steam for the first 15 minutes). But, if you want to compete for the hearth, your task is to make sure that the dough tears as little as possible while working with it. Therefore: dust the table well with flour, remove the dough from the bowl not with your hands, but with a plastic spatula with soft edges, cut it carefully and correctly, work quickly and confidently. How to do this - here's a blog article that tells you in great detail how and what to cut. Don't forget about the dust when pre-forming and shaping (but so that the flour does not get inside the dough), if the dough sticks to the table, it will tear when you roll it. If it breaks, it will become sticky and creeping, and it will not be possible to form it successfully. Well, tight molding is a must, otherwise the workpiece will float, stick, and you will have to forget about the beautiful crust and the beautiful opening of the pores and cuts.
Too sticky at first, once mixed.I’ve already written about humidity, it’s quite high (but not extreme). If your flour is generally not moisture-absorbing, or you have never worked with wet dough at all, use 10% less water; in terms of the recipe on the blog, this is 325 g. water per 500 gr. flour. Well, weigh it carefully (and weigh it in general!). Often we end up with uncomfortable dough just because we measured the ingredients by eye or weighed them inattentively.
Is it necessary to mold it or can it be mixed straight into the mold?Many have already done this, and some are just thinking about how it can be done. On the one hand, why not) But then you will end up with a completely different bread, perhaps with a loose or fallen top, without pronounced pores. And this is normal for such technology (immediately in form). As I wrote above, we all have our own starters and their activity may differ, and we have different conditions and, if you leave the dough overnight, you may not guess with the temperature, so the dough, theoretically, can either under-ferment or ferment. At this stage (at the end of fermentation), assessing the state of the dough, you can always do something: either mold it, removing some of the gas and bringing the dough to a state of tone, or, if it has not yet risen, put it in a warmer place and wait. If your dough is already in shape, you won’t be able to do any of this, you won’t even be able to evaluate it properly; what you bake will be what it will be.
This is partly why bread without kneading in a mold can, in principle, differ from hearth bread without kneading. If you read the article about the differences between hearth and pan bread, then remember that this bread differs both in structure and taste, if only because the loosening and evaporation of moisture in it occurs differently, the density of the crumb is different, and This also affects the taste.
If you encounter sourness in this bread, there may be several reasons. Healthy reasons: the dough may have over-fermented, fermented at a high temperature (25-30) or you increased the percentage of whole wheat flour. Whole grain flour with long fermentation very readily produces sourness :)Unhealthy reasons - weak leaven, in which acid accumulation occurs much more actively than gas accumulation. For you
What should this bread be like?But completely different! Despite the fact that the technology is simple, and even primitive, we will all have different bread, despite the fact that we use the same proportions, simply because we have different conditions and we work with the dough differently. This bread, unlike many other types of bread, has very few very distinctive features, and those that do exist relate to the handling of the dough. This is a completely free recipe that you can adapt to yourself and your needs as you wish, but it is advisable to understand that the result may be different. If you want beauty, pores and prickly cuts, the blog has ready-made technology. If you just want bread, you can bake it either in a mold, or divide it into pieces, place it on a cloth and bake it like ciabatta, or even just bake flatbreads or pizza for children. Undoubtedly, there should be no gross defects, such as a dense rubber crumb, sour taste, undercooked or burnt, otherwise everything is in your hands.Definitely, the bread should not be sour, in a good way, if you have withstood the temperature conditions and time, there should not even be sourness. This bread, whether tin or hearth-baked, should develop a soft wheat taste with creamy notes.
This is mine from yesterday without kneading. The dough fermented for about 15 hours, it stopped standing, but I convinced him to try))
How is it different from “ordinary”?I was recently asked two interesting questions about this bread. First - and how does it differ from the usual one? If nothing, then why do we need to develop gluten in the dough? Despite the fact that, like all other breads that we bake with kneading, it consists of flour and water, there are fundamental differences in it. The gluten in this dough self-develops and self-swells, but to bake the same Tartine, this is not enough; the dough using this method still turns out to be quite weak, so that later it can have the beautiful brutal porosity of Tartine. In addition, when you bake within the usual time frame, developing gluten, it is easier for you to control the dough at each stage in order to obtain high quality bread.
And the second interesting thing from the comments:“It’s so simple, but I want some tricks to tinker with.” Are you sure it's that simple? I already doubt it)))
But your works (not all)), some are very successful!
By the way, soon there will be a no-knead recipe with cold fermentation from Arthur!Good luck and delicious bread!
Sooner or later, everyone who is seriously interested in cooking comes to bake bread in their kitchen. Leafing through books or discussing this issue with friends, involuntarily I would like to choose a simple recipe to try out. And I want even more so that the bread turns out right the first time!
But at the very beginning of the journey, the baker still does not really feel the crumb, the moisture of the dough, and the words autolysis or kneading cause confusion in him. Therefore, the first recipe on which you can try your craving for homemade bread should be extremely simple, even lazy. And issue guaranteed result regardless of which attempt it is.
Homemade bread, prepared without kneading the dough, is the best option for a beginner or those who are sure that they are not “friendly” with dough. It always works out. And everyone has. The dough does not need to be kneaded until your hands begin to feel weak. There is no need to knead after a certain time, no need to seriously engage in molding, learn to make the correct cuts, or ventilate the oven after baking with steam.
The main components of the success of this bread are time and minimal intervention on the part of the cook. Just what you need and it couldn’t be simpler!
This bread can be baked from any flour. You can take only wheat flour, you can mix several types, and each time you will get new bread, although the proportions and recipe will remain the same. You can add caraway seeds, flax seeds, sunflower or pumpkin seeds, dried onions, wheat germ or bran to the dough for this bread. There is only one condition that must be strictly observed: the recipe must contain at least 350 grams of wheat flour. Without going into details that are unnecessary for beginners, this is necessary for the yeast fermentation process, which, by the way, is very small in this recipe.
The remaining grams of flour can be distributed according to your mood or available additives. There is only one condition for baking such bread - the presence of a cast iron pan or roasting pan with a lid.
The original source of this bread is considered to be Mark Bittman's column in the American edition of the New York Times. Subsequently, this recipe was replicated throughout all countries. And it became not only white, but also wheat-rye. By the way, the famous one was published there.
I suggest baking our usual gray bread, basic, without any additives.
Ingredients:
Recipe Information
- Cuisine:American
- Type of dish:bread
- Cooking method: in the oven
- Servings: 1 loaf
- 21 o'clock
- wheat flour, baking - 350 g
- rye flour (peeled) - 200 g
- cold boiled water - 480 ml
- salt – 2 tsp.
- dry instant yeast - 0.5 tsp.
additionally required:
- wheat bran or flour for molding
- bread basket, linen towel.
How to bake
To prepare the bread dough for this recipe, you will need a fairly large bowl, or preferably a pan with a lid.
Before starting work, weigh out the required amount of ingredients on the scale.
Mix all dry ingredients in a saucepan, add water and stir well with a spoon or spatula until the mixture is smooth. Ready! 
Cover the pan with a lid and leave at room temperature for 12 or 18 hours. During this time, the mass will increase three times, become porous and very fragrant. There is no need to check or stir it. Housewives usually knead the dough the day before to bake it the next day. That is why this bread is sometimes called overnight bread. 
Prepare a basket or bowl to proof the dough before baking. It would be ideal if it is similar in shape to the shape of a cast iron stew (round or oval). Sprinkle a linen towel generously with flour and rub it between the fibers of the fabric. You can sprinkle more flour or bran on top to ensure that the wet base does not stick to the towel. 
The dough for this bread will be quite moist. It will be difficult to pick it up with your hands. To do this you will need to use a wide spatula or dough scraper. Sprinkle your work table with flour. Using a spatula, place the contents of the pan on the table. 
Dust your hands with flour and gather the dough from the edges inwards. Carefully tip the dough into the basket onto a towel. Sprinkle the future bread with the remaining flour from the table and cover with the free edge of the towel on top. Leave to rise for 2 hours. 
Half an hour before the end of the proofing time, turn on the oven to maximum and put the stew in there with a lid to heat it up.
A stew is a type of iron or earthenware dish with a lid.
The dough will increase in volume within 2 hours and become porous. 
Using oven mitts, remove the stew from the hot oven. Open the lid. Carefully tip the mixture from the basket into the stew pan. Shake gently as needed to ensure the dough spreads evenly. 
Cover the stew with a lid and place in the oven. Bake the bread for 30 minutes at 230 degrees. Remove the stew from the oven again and remove the lid. 
The bread will “set” and will be half ready. Place the stew back into the oven and bake for another 20 minutes or a little longer until golden brown. 
Take out the finished bread, tip it onto the table and put it on the wire rack. Cool completely.
What a tempting idea - bread, the dough for which does not need to be laboriously kneaded, but simply mixed with a silicone spatula or spoon. Five minutes - and you're done! So simple that even a child can do it. Is it really true?
Well, even a child can actually knead such wet dough. But then quite adult skills will be required. However, let's take things in order.
Let's look at making no-knead bread recipes. With such a small amount of yeast added to the dough, the difference between bread with yeast and with sourdough is invisible. Choose what is most convenient for you. In both options, the bread crumb will be dense, elastic, “rubbery” - and in highest degree aromatic due to long fermentation.
The night before baking day, combine the flour, water, salt and yeast or starter according to the recipe in a large bowl. 0.25 tsp dry yeast - this is one coffee spoon, if you have one on your farm. Cover the bowl with cling film, place in a bag, or place a plastic shower cap over it. Leave the dough at room temperature for 12-18 hours.
The next nice thing about no-knead bread is that it doesn’t bother the dough to sit for an extra hour or two. If you are not up to it, put the dough in the refrigerator and let it rise even longer. Very convenient.
But finally, you decided to start shaping the bread. And here the difficulties begin.
High moisture dough is extremely sticky. It sticks to everything, even silicone surfaces. To work with such wet dough, you need to get used to it. For the first time, you may get confused due to lack of habit, especially if you perceive “without kneading” as “without difficulty.” It would be much easier if this liquid mass could be immediately poured into a baking dish. But no, in this case you will get not tall bread, but a flat crust.
The purpose of forming is to create a dense shell on the surface of the dough piece, inside which the bulk of the dough remains very wet.
To do this, sprinkle the work surface with an even layer of flour a couple of millimeters thick. For uniformity, pour flour through a sieve. If you pour flour unevenly, then the finished bread may contain inclusions of unmoistened flour - this is the most common mistake for beginners.
Prepare a shallow bowl of flour for dipping your fingers, silicone spatula, and scraper into.
This dough should not be punched down so as not to damage the large bubbles inside it that have formed over the long fermentation time. Love the holey crumb of ciabatta and want to bake it at home? Practice with wet, no-knead bread dough first. You need to treat him gently, but decisively. To put it figuratively, with a confident master's hand in a velvet glove. To paraphrase Richard Bertinet, I’ll say this: the test needs to show who’s boss. However, this is true for any dough, it’s just that wet ones are more capricious.
Tilt the bowl over a floured work surface and use a bench scraper or silicone spatula to carefully lift it out of the bowl. The dough will spread into a flat cake. Lightly dust its surface with flour. Dip your fingers into flour.
Lift one edge of the tortilla and fold it over the middle. Lift the opposite edge of the tortilla and cover the already folded dough so that it is folded into thirds. Repeat with the other sides of the tortilla to create a rectangle. Did you find out? This is the "stretch and fold" technique described in "Kneading, Fermenting, Shaping, Proofing, Baking Wheat Bread." It is well suited for working with wet dough that cannot be pressed down too much.
If the dough sticks to the work surface, help yourself with a scraper and add flour in an even, thin layer. Fold the dough 2-3 times. Turn it over with the smooth side up and roll it up. The spreading cake that was at the beginning has turned into a tall round piece that holds its shape quite well.
Place the workpiece in a greased pan made of heat-resistant glass or ceramics with a volume of 3-3.5 liters. Close the lid and leave to proof for 1.5-2.5 hours. There are no cuts on this bread.
Initially, no-knead bread was supposed to be baked in a hot cast-iron pan. This method is described in “The First DIY Wheat Bread.” But practice shows that in glass and ceramics it turns out no worse, and putting a cold glass pan in the oven is much easier than taking out a hot heavy casserole dish, placing a dough piece in it and returning the casserole dish to the oven. Of course, if this method suits you better, you can bake bread without kneading in cast iron.
By the way, bread without kneading can also be baked in an open pan, using the traditional method of creating steam. Decide for yourself what is more convenient for you. In the meantime, let's get back to baking in a glass or ceramic pan with a lid.
Preheat the oven to 260°C. Place crumpled baking foil on a baking sheet to prevent the pan from sliding. Place the pan on it and return the baking sheet to the oven.
The oven temperature will drop. Wait until it returns to 250°C and bake the bread, covered, for 20 minutes. If you have a glass pan, then you will see how it inflates right before your eyes, like a balloon. After 20 minutes, remove the lid from the pan, reduce the oven temperature to 200°C and continue baking the bread for another 20 minutes. If the top crust has turned golden and is starting to bronze, it’s time to check for doneness.
Remove the pan with the bread from the oven. Place one hand on the bread, tilt and invert the pan so that the bread is on your palm - or rather, on your baking mitt. Need I remind you that both the pan and the bread are very hot? Remove the second mitt and tap the bottom of the bread with a bent finger. If the sound is clear, as if you are knocking on an empty wooden box, the bread is ready. If the sound is dull or “cotton”, return the bread to finish baking without the pan for 5-10 minutes.
As always, if the bread is already ready, but you want the crust to be more golden brown, you can leave the bread in the turned off cool oven for 5-10 minutes.
Cool the finished bread on a wire rack.
No-knead bread has a very hard, glossy, varnished crust. Unlike soft yeast bread, it cuts perfectly while still hot, and the crumb does not knead. But for this you need a large bread knife with a serrated blade. Place the bread on its side, vertically, so it will be easier to cut.
When the bread has cooled, place it in a plastic food bag for a while and the crust will become soft. This is true for any bread.
By the way, it is better to store bread in paper bags or in ceramic dishes, rather than packing it in plastic for a long time. If you don't plan to eat the bread in the next couple of days, it's best to freeze it. Wrap the completely cooled bread in several layers of cling film, making sure it fits as tightly as possible, and place it in the freezer. When you need the bread, take it out in advance and leave it to thaw at room temperature without removing the film. It can stay in the freezer for several months, and when thawed, it will turn out the same as you put it there. It can also be convenient to cut the bread into slices and freeze in portions.
Bon appetit!
Minimum products: flour, water, yeast, salt. I always use instant dry yeast.
Dissolve yeast and salt in warm water.
We don’t wait for the yeast to come to life, but immediately sift the flour into a bowl of liquid and mix with a spoon. There is no need to achieve complete homogeneity. It is enough for the flour to completely absorb the liquid. After this has happened, cover the container with the dough with cling film and place it in a warm place for 2 hours. However, keep in mind that the dough will increase in size at least two to three times. Therefore, choose a container the size of which will allow the dough to rise.
After two hours, grease a thick-walled container with vegetable oil and sprinkle with flour. Shake off excess flour that has not settled on the walls. You can use a cauldron, cauldron, or any other thick-walled container as a container.
Our dough has risen a lot.
Sprinkle the work surface with flour and dump the dough onto it, carefully scraping it off the sides of the container. Using your hands, crush the dough into a large flat cake.
Now we need to fold the dough into an envelope. To do this, first we place two opposite sides of the cake on top of each other, stretching each edge a little.
Now we fold the other two sides in the same way. Don't forget to pull them out.
Place the resulting envelope in our baking container, seam side down, and cover with a lid. If the container is not deep enough, cover the dough with a floured towel and film on top. Place the container with the dough in a warm place for 30 minutes and turn on the oven, setting the temperature to 220 degrees.
After half an hour, the well-risen bread, covered with a lid, is placed in a very well-heated oven. After 20 minutes, remove the lid and bake the bread without the lid for 30 minutes. Please note that the oven must be very hot, otherwise the bread may fall off after removing the lid. If the container with bread is not high enough, then put it in the oven immediately without a lid, placing a container of water on the bottom of the oven or spraying 50 ml of water from a spray bottle.
Type: Other
Time: 60 minutes
Difficulty: Medium
Servings: 5
If you've been hesitant to bake bread because you're afraid of the difficulty, this recipe is for you! Thanks to him, you will be able to delight your loved ones with lush and fragrant homemade bread at least every day. No long kneading.
The bread turns out to be quite moist inside, with large pores and a thin crispy crust. Fans of ciabatta - Italian white bread - will especially like it. Fresh yeast can be replaced with dry yeast; for this amount of flour 4 g will be enough (about three-quarters of a tablespoon).
Ingredients
Wheat flour 530 g
Water 420 ml
Yeast 10 g
Salt 1 tsp.
Preparation
- Dissolve the yeast in warm water (37-39 degrees). Sift the flour into a deep bowl, add salt, pour in the dissolved yeast. Knead the dough to medium consistency. Cover the bowl with cling film with a small hole to allow air to escape and leave for 2 hours at room temperature.
- In 2 hours, the dough should rise 2 times, and there will be a lot of bubbles on its surface. Don’t forget that our dough is without kneading, so without kneading it, cover the bowl with film or a lid with a hole and put it in the refrigerator overnight.
- The next morning, take out the required amount of dough. To make it less sticky, dust your hands with flour. Roll the lump in flour, forming a ball (to do this, fold the edges of the dough down and inward).
- Place the ball on a sheet of baking paper sprinkled with flour and leave to rise for another 40-60 minutes. No need to cover. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 235 degrees.
- Make 3 cuts on the dough, move it along with the paper onto a baking sheet and place it in the oven on the middle tier. Place another baking sheet on the lower tier, pouring 1.5 tbsp into it. hot water to create a sauna effect. Bake the bread for 45 minutes, then remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack.
Homemade bread dough keeps well in the refrigerator for 2 weeks, so you can bake a fresh loaf for dinner at a moment's notice. Just remember to cover the dough with film to prevent it from drying out.
