The No-Knead Bread

Jim Lahey’s bread recipe got filed away into my “must try” folder when I saw it 3 weeks ago. I figured it would be a great addition to the unit study we’re planning to do in January — about sourdoughs and fermentation.

Whoa! Three weeks later, everyone’s talking about it and has had all kinds of success with it. There’s a theory that the people with little to no experience have the most success with it. Mark Bittman even says an ambitious 8-yo could do it. But even my 4-yo is quite proficient with mixing and working doughs and batters, so I’d love to see “her” bread. Since 15-yo and 10-yo has some experience too, I’m going to try another twist in our unit study — I’ll have each child do it on his/her own and then we’ll compare the results! My version will have whole wheat in it.

*My* theory is that this works really well because the baker is encouraged to NOT work the dough. I’ve found through the years that my “most successful” breads are the ones where I felt I didn’t do enough. That the dough was too wet, and SURELY it would get all sticky and gloopy in the oven: case in point: pizza crusts. The best pizza crusts I’ve ever made were the ones that were a bit too wet to handle. A baker friend once advised me to use water on my hands if I felt the dough was getting too difficult to handle, instead of using more flour. And of course there’s the cold rise, where dough is left overnight to ferment — more flavor, better texture. Another trick is to use oil instead of flour on the kneading surface. As a beginner baker I always had a tendency to keep adding flour until the dough felt more like playdough to me — no sticking allowed. As I learned to relax and trust the dough, I’ve had to use less. Jim Lahey combines both this technique of using just enough flour and allowing the dough ample resting time to develop. It’s akin to working with biscuits — when you feel you knead to add more, stop. When you feel you need to knead more, stop. Some things just seem to know what they’re doing better than you do — bread is one of those things.

What’s the revelation for me here is the use of the pot. One item that’s been on my list forever is a baking cloche — the cheaper way to get the effects of baking in a brick oven inside the home. I remember Jeff Varasano (the guy who worked on the “perfect” pizza crust for 8 years) and a couple other folks talking about putting oven stones or bricks or quarry tiles not only at the bottom of the oven, but also at the top, to mimic the effects of the brick oven where you’ve got intense heat (the mass of the bricks holds the heat in) all around. So I’m really encouraged to find out that I can take the cloche off my list and put the money towards other things. I’m excited to experiment, if only to find one more use for my beloved cast iron pot.

Pictures ofpeople’s no-knead breads on Flicker.