I baked a loaf of bread yesterday. It was delicious. It was easy. It was cheap.
Last winter, I undertook a quest to find the best whole wheat bread in a grocery store. I like sandwiches and I like toast, so removing bread from my diet isn’t an option. While trying to balance cost and nutrition, I eventually discovered Rainier Organic’s Sasquatch Grain & Seed Bread. At about 10 cents per ounce, this stuff is cheaper than all but the “artificial everything” breads. Best of all? Eating it is like eating a field of wheat.
Several people suggested that I might want to make my own bread. At the time, I dismissed the idea as crazy. I can remember my mother spending a lot of time kneading dough and shuffling loaf pans when I was a boy. I may be working from home now, but I’m not interested in devoting my life to baked goods.
Minimalist bread
Still, there are few things better in life than a hunk of warm, crusty bread slathered with honey or jam. (Perhaps with a hunk of sharp cheddar cheese on the side.) So when Brad suggested insisted I try Mark Bittman’s minimalist “no-knead” bread recipe, I took the plunge into home baking.
In this New York Times video, Bittman visits the Sullivan Street Bakery in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen to learn the secret of great bread from owner Jim Lahey.
Turns out this bread really is so easy that anyone can make it. And the total cost? According to Andy at The New Cook, this bread costs about 63 cents per loaf, or about a nickel per ounce. That’s roughly the same price as the cheap artificial stuff in the grocery store, but you’re getting a loaf of fresh, crusty bread. That’s tough to beat.
(For a great variation, check out SmarterFitter’s Four-Seed No-Knead Bread.)
A perfect loaf?
Cook’s Illustated tackled this recipe in their January 2008 issue. While they admitted that it was easy, they didn’t like the “bland flavor” and the unreliable rising. Using their methodology of relentless refinement, they added a bit of salt, reduced the water, and introduced a secret ingredient: beer.
Cook’s Illustrated calls their version “Almost No-Knead” Bread, or No-Knead Bread 2.0. This bread is started on the first day and baked on the second. Other than planning ahead, it’s almost effortless and results in a wonderful chewy bread with a crunchy deep-brown crust. Here’s the recipe (with some minor modifications from us):
Almost No-Knead Bread
- 3 cups unbleached flour (15 ounces)
- 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
- 1-1/2 teaspoon table salt
- 3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons water, room temperature or just slightly warm
- 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons mild-flavored lager, room temp and flat (note: we use a pale ale)
- 1 tablespoon white vinegar (note: we use white balsamic vinegar from Trader Joe’s)
Day one
If necessary, heat water and beer in microwave to make them closer to room temperature. Whisk flour, yeast and salt in a large shallow bowl. Add water, beer and vinegar. Using a rubber spatula, fold mixture, scraping up from the bottom until a dry, shaggy ball forms. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 8 to 18 hours, until the surface is covered with bubbles. Total time for day one: about ten minutes.Day two
Transfer dough to a lightly floured work surface and knead 10-15 times. Wash out the dough bowl and lay a 12×18 piece of oven-safe parchment paper inside it and spray with non-stick cooking spray. Shape the dough into a ball by pulling edges into the middle. Transfer dough — seam-side down — to the parchment-lined bowl and spray surface with cooking spray. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature until dough has doubled in size and does not readily spring back when poked with a finger (about 2 hours).About 30 minutes before baking, adjust oven rack to lowest position and place a 6-8 quart Dutch oven (with lid slightly ajar) on rack to heat. Preheat oven to 500 degrees.
Lightly flour top of dough and use a very sharp knife to make one slit, 6 inches long and 1/2″ deep. Carefully remove hot Dutch oven from oven and remove lid. Pick up dough by lifting parchment paper and lower into Dutch oven. Add lid and place in oven. Immediately lower temperature to 425 degrees and bake covered for 30 minutes. Remove lid and continue cooking 20-30 minutes longer, until the bread is a deep brown and sounds rather hollow when tapped.
Remove and transfer to a wire rack and cool to room temperature.
Total time for day two: about ten minutes.
For more on this recipe, check out the Cook’s Illustrated web site, or visit Breadtopia (a blog devoted to bread!).
Delicious!
Kris and I have been making this bread for three months now, and it’s fantastic. I’ll admit that it’s not the healthiest stuff (it’s little more than flour and salt, after all), but it’s delicious — especially with home-made strawberry jam. Along the way, we’ve learned a couple things. If you have a good kitchen scale, for example, we recommend weighing the the flour rather than measuring by volume.
Also, in the winter, our house is too cold (54 degrees) for this to rise properly overnight, so we use a water/beer mixture that feels slightly warm to the touch to give it a kick start, then turn on the oven light and put the dough into the gas oven.
The cost for a single loaf of this bread runs about $1.50. The flour is about 60 cents, the yeast is about a quarter, the beer costs about forty cents, and the other ingredients cost a few cents each. So, for a little more than the cheap bread in the grocery store, you can have a loaf of actual artisan bread.
The real joy is the ease of this recipe and the sense of accomplishment from baking your own bread. Your friends will be impressed!
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Brad – Bittman’s basic recipe as printed in the Times uses all purpose flour. That’s why it’s bland. You are using a specialty flour that will have more flavor on it’s own.
Suggestions for JD:
For the flour – use 2 cups bread flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, and 3 tablespoons of soy flour. This will create a better and deeper flavor, while giving you what is essentially whole wheat bread (whole wheat flour cannot be used alone as it incapable of developing sufficient gluten to rise. Any baker who tells you that they only use whole wheat flour in their bread is lying, unless they server dense, flat bread).
You can also add a quarter of a crushed vitamin C tablet to reinforce gluten formation. This will give your bread better structure.
If you ever decide you want to look at the cooking of bread more closely, I suggest you check Shirley Corriher’s Cookwise out of the library and read the first section, which is about bread. She explains the science behind baking bread.
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Brad is correct – the long rising makes the flavor. I think Cook’s Illustrated created a “problem” when they tried to speed up the recipe so they compensted with beer. I’ve made it both ways and I like the original better – besides, I’d rather drink my beer than eat it.
I shape my loaves on unsprayed parchment and dump them into the pre-heated pots without the parchment. When I tried it the CI way, baking the parchment to preserve the shape, I didn’t think the loaf browned as evenly. I personally prefer the rustic shape with an evenly browned crust.
As for the baking containers, I use an 8-quart stainless steel stew pot with a heavy bottom and an iron lid (the glass lid the pot came with is only rated to 450 and I bake at 475). If I make two loaves at once, I use a regular cast-iron (not enameled) dutch oven for the second loaf and it works well, too. I pre-heat both pot and lid but separately, not with the lid covering the pot.
I use 10 oz bread flour, 5 oz whole wheat, 12 oz water (slightly warmed in microwave to compensate for our cold house, about 58-60 in winter) 7 grams salt and 1 gram yeast. Combine, cover with plastic wrap and leave overnight. If I don’t have time to bake it when it seems ready, I just punch it down and bake a few hours later. The texture is not quite as good (big holes) but still very delicious. 30 minutes at 475 with lid, 20 minutes same temp without lid.
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Nicki –
I use Pyrex whenever I make no-knead breads (because I’m too lazy to get a new handle for my beautiful dutch oven). Some people recommend making an edge liner of tin foil to keep everything in, but I haven’t found that necessary. My Pyrex is from the 70′s, though; I’m not sure if newer Pyrex would work as well/be safe!
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Hi, everyone,
Try to use bread maker, for example Panasonic SD 255. I own one over six months. Fast and simple to make, recipes included.
From Russia with love,
Pavel
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I’ve been reading your blog for a while now, but am a little behind on the posts. This one was particularly fun, because the day after you posted this, I began making my own homemade bread. My recipe makes 3 loaves, so I can have one to be eaten fresh and freeze two to be used as needed (or give them away if there’s someone who would be blessed by a great loaf of bread). Thanks for the post.
Always love reading your blog.
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I’ve been using the CI recipe, and found it works great, once I added more flour. The 15 oz. they recommended left me with a sticky dough I couldn’t knead, so I use 15.5 oz. Sometimes the dough is still slightly sticky, but not unworkable. I also use a honey beer to make the bread a little sweeter than using a standard pale ale.
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I make bread and have made our bread for more than two years. We like wholemeal bread and this is my recipe.
I make double the amount in one mix.
1 lb wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon mix with the flour yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
half a teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of oil of your choice
11 fluid ounces warm water
Mix all this together thoroughly, DO NOT KNEAD, put it in a loaf tin and allow to rise.
Cook as any other bread.
DELISH!
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We are currently living in Mongolia (no kidding, been here a year and two more to go!). There is no one-stop shopping here and after several months of purchasing various kinds of store bread, yogurt, and hamburger meat, I didn’t find any I liked and quality and source of origin is questionable to say the least. I ordered a yogurt maker, a bread machine, a scale, and a meat grinder on-line. We use all three with a transformer and have great results.
We buy steak meat in the local market (not super market, but a large enclosed warehouse type of building which sells all types of food stuff. Meat is displayed on slabs and we have found Mongolian beef to be the best we’ve ever eaten anywhere. We purchase 5kg of steak meat every two to three weeks and spend under $40. After we get home, we slice some of the steak strips for steak, some for stir fry, and the rest we grind to make chili, spaghetti, or lasagna.
I usually make a loaf of bread each week, and yogurt every two to three days. I will try adapting the recipes here for our bread maker. Our fresh yogurt (made in small baby-food sized jars) has taken the place of ice cream as dessert. Not only more healthy, but much tastier!
Following JD’s advice, we are now grocery shopping every other week. I love the savings in $$$ and in time.
Thanks everyone for sharing your advice and recipes!
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can you make bread from just flour and water ??? and can someone tell me
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Here’s another recipe that I believe sounds a bit easier than yours.
Mix ~10oz water, 1/2 tsp yeast, ~1 tbsp honey, and some flour (enough to make it paste like in texture) in a bowl. Set in fridge overnight.
Add another 1/2 tsp yeast, and start mixing in more flour until dough is appropriate texture, tacky but not sticky. Set on plate on counter for ~1 hour.
Lightly oil bottom and sides of bread pan. Knead dough for a minute or two. Roll dough into cylinder to fit in bread pan. Run hot water in another pan. Put dough on baking rack in oven, and hot water below dough. Close oven door and leave off. Check back in about 1 1/2 hours to see how far dough has risen. If it is near the top of the bread pan turn oven on to 350 for 27 minutes (I just leave it in while preheating, also leave water pan in). When timer goes off, take out of oven. You can leave it in the bread pan for a bit before you take it out, or you can take it out and wrap in foil right away.
I like this because it give me bread in a consistent cross section that I can make sandwiches out of all week for my girlfriend and me.
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J.D. – Regarding your quest for the best whole wheat bread, have you been to the Dave’s Killer Bread outlet across from Bob’s Red Mill in Milwaukie? You can by imperfects and ‘day olds’ at a great price.
We buy 12 x loaves at a time to get an extra discount and freeze most of it. Comes out to ~$2.20 to ~$2.50 / loaf for excellent organic bread. It is usually > $4 / loaf at the grocery store.
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A little old topic now, but always timely. Slow-risen bread, even using all purpose flour, is healthier than the grocery store chopped and preformed manufactured loaves rise. Slow rising makes the wheat more digestible.
And yes, bread can be made from flour and water. Knead some water with flour and leave it alone awhile, and it will start to rise. Passover breadmakers have to work fast because flour and water dough will rise on its own.
Stuff like oil and salt slow down and control rising.
I have a starter that I made from some Gold Medal White Flour without yeast. You don’t need yeast. You can make a starter with yeast if you want and just keep using that. Feed it with flour and/or sugars several hours before you make the main dough.
I have discovered high heat is the key to bread baking. I didn’t like the bread machine that I got rid of years ago. Now I bake my bread in a flat pizza oven with a slide out tray like some convenience stores use. My bread is ready in 10 to 15 minutes.
I usually bake bread flat, like pizza, but I can bake it as high as I can fit it in the pizza oven.
The little oven is also great for potatoes, which really need high heat to break them down and make them digestible.
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