November 09, 2006

• Get to work you loafers!
• I know this person's recipe is no-knead, but I have to say that I find most cookbook recipes aggravating because doughs are always so sticky that I can't work with them. Put some flour on the surface? Ha... it just sucks up the flour off the surface and gets sticky again. Oil my hands? Ha... my hands are fine for 10 seconds and just get sticky again. I'm not sure what the secret is.
• Very cool article, thanks SB!
• But.. but... kneading is the best part!
• I can attest to the yummy goodness of the various breads of Sullivan Street Bakery. My favorite is this rectangular piece with cherry tomatoes embedded within - what a delight. Very interesting read. Hoo!
• I love the SPCA poster with the adorable squeeworthy kittenses and the caption "We knead you."
• Wheeeee! Oh crap I don't have an oven....
• I just finished a loaf of this no-knead bread recipe, and it came out pretty good. The crust was A+. I had a little trouble with it sticking to my pot, but other than that, it was a great loaf. Oh crap I don't have an oven You might be able to bake a decent loaf of bread in a rice cooker (I've never tried myself, though, I expect some models are better at it than others). doughs are always so sticky that I can't work with them What I do is make sure the dough is well mixed in the mixing bowl first. It should start to pull away from the sides of the bowl. If not, add more flour. After it's turned out onto a floured counter keep sprinking flour on as you knead until the dough transitions from sticky to tacky. It doesn't matter if some sticks to your hands. Don't worry about that.
• I get no kick from sham pain; Dough in my pot doesn't thrill me a lot, So tell me why, at snack or feast, I get a kick from no-yeast?
• It doesn't matter if some sticks to your hands. Don't worry about that. Unless, you know, you end up with giant doughballs for hands. I enjoy the kneading process but I never knead it the right amount. I'm but a novice when it comes to breadmaking, though. #2 jokes that we could use my bread for doorstops. Still, he eats it. And that is love.
• Biscuit Dough Hands Man
• Brilliant! Bear bread will be baked!
• Unless, you know, you end up with giant doughballs for hands. The dough really shouldn't do that if you work it in the mixing bowl first so it starts to pull away from the sides. And if it does start sticking to your hands, sprinkle more flour on the dough before you end up with dough ball hands.
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• MonkeyFilter: It doesn't matter if some sticks to your hands. Don't worry about that.
• . . . baby
• I also made a loaf of this. The results were interesting. Some photos here: 1, 2. (self link) The crust is crispy, even beyond the normal crispy crust my bread usually has. (When I bake bread, I put a pan full of rocks on the bottom shelf of the oven and pour in some boiling water immediately before the bread goes in. Some consider this overkill, but it does give a nice crust. Also, I have a gas oven.) It has that nice sheen that only comes from proper humidity. As is obvious from the pics, the loaf is oddly shaped. I attribute this to not having the correct pan to bake it in. This one was a bit too large. I'll have to borrow a better pan and try it again. The texture of the bread is a bit unusual. It's a wetter and chewier crumb than I usually make. Not bad, just different. The dough was annoying to work with. Even with the minimal handling, the dough sticks to everything, including the breadboard and the baking cloth I used for the second rise. I'll probably try it again but with 1 1/2 cups of water instead of the 1 5/8 cups recommended in the recipe. Also, it's a bit bland for my taste; I'll probably increase the salt to 2 tsp, or sprinkle some on the top before baking.
• To all the people saying add more flour to stop it going sticky: phooey! PHOOEY I SAY! If you're adding extra flour, you're screwing up your quantities/ratios. I bought this great book on bread-making a little while back (called "Dough" -- it comes with a DVD!) that teaches what he claims to be the French method of making bread, which doesn't actually include any kneading at all. You make a rather sticky loaf, turn it out onto a non-floured surface, and you basically slap the dough on the bench, fold it over, and slap it again and again. As you slap it, see, it stretches out (so you can fold it) and the folding traps air inside. In very quick time, the dough stops sticking to everything and becomes a coherent mass, without having to add extra flour. You spend much less time slapping than you would kneading, and the end result is a light, yummy loaf.
• If you get dough all over your hands, submerge them for 90 seconds in a deep fryer, remove, sprinkle with powdered sugar and enjoy!
• TUM, what have you done to make the doughboy so sad?
• If I had balls of dough, I'd be sad.
• Yes, but think of the fun you would have flouring them.
• Hicinbaby, that bread looks yummy! I'm going to try this on the weekend.
• Thanks for posting his, StoryBored. I have a bowl of yeasty dough sitting in my oven at room temerature, and it looks like it's coming along pretty well. I'll post pictures if it ever becomes a decent loaf like hicinbaby's. Frankly, right now it looks like a failed 7th grade science experiment: I keep waiting for red #5 food coloring & baking soda to come pouring out of its center. Rise, you Son of a Bun!
• Hi, maryh! /gleefully anticipates picture of Volcano Bread
• Don't sweat the weirdness. (Not a bad rule for life, come to think of it.) This entire process is not your normal bread making, where everything looks pretty all the way through the process. Nothing here looks nice until the final result. My first loaf looked just wrong, wrong, wrong, right up until the finished loaf came out of the oven. In fact, when I pulled the top off the cooking pot halfway through the baking, my first thought was "how am I going to get rid of this slimy mess?" My second loaf with the lesser amount of water came out *much* better. Alas, while I was looking for new batteries for the digicam so's I could share it with you all, my weekend houseguests attacked it with a knife, and the remains are not suitable for viewing. I'm going to start another loaf with some of that newfangled white whole wheat flour. The vultures guests will be gone tomorrow so stay tuned.
• Hi Bees! :) I'm not going to bother posting pictures, because my loaf ended up looking almost identical to hicinbaby's, but with a slightly darker crust. In fact, everything hicinbaby said above applies to my experience too (slimy, YES! No fun to work with AT ALL) but, probably because I used a teaspoon of starter instead of the 1/4 tsp of yeast, the flavor was fantastic. I mean, really great, better than any sour dough I've tried to do in the past. But it just didn't quite have the rise I'd hoped for, and it was gummier than I'd wanted. There's a video feature with that NY Times story that I really wished I'd watched before I tossed this mess in the oven. The baker uses 1 and 1/2 cups of water, and he makes a point of heating his oven to 500 degrees- he even recommends going higher, up to 550. And he stresses the folding and seam-making before the second rise. My dough was so sticky I wasn't able to do much except yank it around like a gluey accordian; it's pretty clear that it didn't need to be quite that wet. I'm going to try it again tomorrow with a little less water. Anyway, I lost about a 1/4th of the dough when I tried to shake it loose from the towel. Even with a heavy layer of flour, the stuff just stuck. I still can't believe it turned out as well as it did. I guess the guy's right, it really IS foolproof (& I'm the fool that proves it.) hicinbaby, are you talking about the King Arthur White Wheat flour? That stuff is great! Really nice to work with, and it's got a nice light texture once it's baked. Keep me posted on how it turns out!
• The towel thing - wouldn't it be possible to do that part on something more rigid so ye could scrape it off? What is the merit in using a towel? /culinary disastermaster
• Maryh: the dough comes out *much* nicer when you only use 1 1/2 cups of water as opposed to the 1 5/8 that the recipe calls for. You wouldn't think an ounce of water would make that much difference. I think the flour I tried is probably the same as the KA White Wheat. I've only just started using it. I buy it in bulk from my local health food store. They don't have a brand name on the bulk bins. As for the loaf being gummy, that's usually a function of it being undercooked. Try checking the internal temp (should be 205-210.) Watch out if you stick one of these loaves with a probe-- the crust is so tight it actually builds up pressure and you'll get a jet of steam. (Like I needed more scars on my hands....) Bees: You need the cloth because you have to pick the dough up, flip it over, and drop it into a very hot pot. All while handling it very gently so the dough doesn't deflate, and hopefully not adding your own seared flesh to the recipe. Pieces of flour sack are the traditional medium. Nowadays the restaurant supply stores sell squares of coarse muslin as "flour sack towels" for the purpose.
• Ow! The part about the hot pot didn't register with me before. Would a cast-iron Dutch oven work for this?
• Thanks for the running commentary, Maryh! I didn't get a chance to get to the oven on the weekend but I'm determined to give this a try some time real soon. (And will definitely use 1-1/2 cups water :-) ) What did you mean by "starter"?

• Would a cast-iron Dutch oven work for this?

  A cast iron Dutch oven will cook anything. I'm just too lazy to dig mine out of the back of the pantry.
• I love how clean my fingernails are after I've made bread.
• I'm toying with the idea of making this for my Thanksgiving dish-to-pass. Is this one of them thinkgs you can make the night before and it's still good at lunchtime the next day, or is it a "best when fresh" affair?
• Depends on what you have under your fingernails.
• Oh, sorry. You were asking about the recipe, weren't you?
• Is it clique-ish of us to tolerate this recipe thread when LaGatta was kicked out for posting 'em? Not trying to get this thread Eeked, mind you, just think something here is out of kilter if not unjust. Could/Should LaGatta's banning be lifted?
• I got the impression LaGatta wanted to leave, from this thread
• I don't know what she wanted. However, that thread was made only after a series of ... confrontations/objections ... from others.
• Let them eek cake!
• Previous recipe threads. There are lots of them. I can't remember LaGatta's specific recipe transgression. It wasn't that it had to do with recipes right? Was it that it was her recipe? Kinda like a self-linking recipe post? "Your Honor, I agree this is a recipe FPP, but I kneaded the dough"
• If I recall correctly, tracicle indicated there were quite enough recipe posts, and LaGatta either didn't get it or didn't believe it. But there'd been some general sniping at her. When a creature or a person is goaded, not too surprising if they eventually try to snap back, even though it's deplorable. And this is our Dark Side, alas. Just as mine is that I am a bred-in-the-bone underdogger.
• Because of the success of the original article, the author has posted a follow-up article with FAQs and tweaks.