December 7, 2007 - 11:14am
New no-knead book -- anyone read it?
I stumbled upon the following article in the NY Times on a new book called, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.
From the looks of it, it seems that the author takes a master recipe in which a wet dough is mixed, but not kneaded, and then popped in the fridge overnight, and then adds a lot of variations to create different breads. Anyway, I was curious whether anyone here had read it and, if so, what you thought.
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The Orange County library system has it on order, so I am going to put in a hold and get it when it arrives.
Colin
here's a link to this subject recently posted....
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/4910/here-we-go-again-no-knead-part-deux
I even posted to that thread! I didn't realize they were the same thing .... Sorry folks!
I think it sounds interesting and I'm going to give it a try when I have the time. From looking at the book on Amazon it looks like they do all kinds of breads and pastries. Through the years I've had doughs in the making when something came up and I had to put it in the fridge till I could get back to it. I always ended up making good bread out of these doughs and sometimes I noticed that the bread was even better for the wait. I should have written a book!!
The video was very good (unlike the NYT NK video). Note that the author says to put the loaf on the middle shelf not the lower shelf as it's written in the book. Also, in the newspaper article from MN. the author says if there is just a small amount of dough left in the container they just leave it there and add more ingredients for a new batch...fermented bread. Reminds me of an article from the guy who wrote the book THE MAGIC OF FIRE (wonderful, by the way). He writes about European people who have never washed out their wooden bread bowl. They just swirl around some water in the bowl and continue adding flour etc.
What the heck, sounds easy. If it's mediocre I'll forget it. weavershouse
I'm not sure I buy into the concept of 5 minutes a day for fresh bread, even if it's true mathematically. I like this and the origional No Knead formula mainly because it brought thousands of people into Artisan bread and revived the movement.
I don't mean to sound like a crab but to me the word Artisan means you attempt to be an artist in the stages of preparation and finishing your work. The object is not to try to make it as easy as possible. The object is to make it as good and beautiful as possible. Artisan is something to strive for. IMHO
SO having gotten that off my chest, I mixed a batch this morning of the master formula, let it ferment for 3 hours and baked half as a single free form loaf. I even preheated the stone just to be fair about the experiment. I did deviate just ever so slightly in that I used a trick I learned from an old master, Professor Calvel. Instead of using straight AP flour, I used 1/2 Cup of White Rye and 6 Cups of Harvest King from Gold Medal. HK is my basic stock flour I use in everything that calls for AP or bread flour. It's almost as strong as KA AP, very high quality at half the cost at least.
The bread baked up very nicely and was delicious. The batch I baked right off after the bulk ferment had a nice after taste that I associate with the addition of rye in small amounts. The nice thing about this bread is that it tastes pretty good for such a short time fermenting. I suspect that the longer the remaining dough sits in the cooler the lower the PH will go and the flavors will build in a similar fashion to sourdough. I couldn't help myself I just had to fold and french fold a couple times to assure the gluten was forming and shape the dough into a boule. So here are the results. I started at 6:00 AM and we were cutting bread at 11:00, slightly warm.
Eric, this looks interesting. I watched the video and didn't hear the oven temp. mentioned - what did you use? Darn, another bread to try! A.
AnnieT, I read the NY Times article which calls for a 450 F oven for about 30 minutes on a stone or in a greased pan. The photo above I started under the bowl for the first 15 minutes.
Eric
Many thanks, Eric. After I was in bed and the computer turned off I had a thought about checking all the references in other posts, too late at that point. Your loaf looks really good - did you use the "grapefruit" sized amount? Thanks again, A.
Eric, sorry to flog this to death but I would imagine the yeast they use is regular and it would take much less instant yeast? I think I still have a jar of the old fashioned stuff in the refrigerator but it is probably way out of date. A.
Hi Annie,
I've quite busy lately and haven't had time to bake much bread, but this certainly caught my eye! Instant yeast is the only type I have so that's what I used...for my first attempt I only made 1/3 of the total master recipe just so I could test it out. I used 1 teaspoon of instant yeast and also 1 teaspoon of regular table salt.
I mixed the dough after breakfast, put it right away in the fridge and baked it for dinner. For the preshaping I did a stretch and fold or two, then shaped it into a boule, let it sit for about 10 minutes and then tightened it up. It proofed freeform on parchment paper and baked it using Susan's under a bowl method.
It was excellent!
Good luck!
L_M
Hi L_M, thanks for the suggestion of making a small batch as a trial. Once I discovered instant yeast that is all I use and I was glad to get your amount specification. I may just have to try it today, A.