Tastebud Chicago

Last week, the New York Times made a bold claim. It had nothing to do with Iraq, the election, or our rights slowly being chipped away at by our hateful government, it was about bread. Specifically, it was about one New York baker’s claim that the traditional 12 steps of baking can do with one less step.

From The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart, here are the traditional 12 steps of bread baking.

1. Mise en place: Set up your workspace. Measure your stuff, put them in cute little bowls, fix your hair, smooth down wrinkles in your apron, smile for the camera.

2. Mixing: Kneading. If by hand, typically 300 kneads, if by machine, a few minutes. This builds the gluten strands that are soooo important to bread. (Nudge, nudge, this is the step that sassy New Yorker wants to kill.)

3. Primary Fermentation: The first big chunk of waiting time. The yeast does it’s thing, making little yeast gasses, making the bread rise. Remember the gluten strands from step two? They’re holding all the gas in.

4. Punching Down (Degassing): Knock out the majority of the gas. We’re not eating a cream puff here, we’re eating bread.

5. Dividing: Chunk up the dough into whatever portions you’re going to be serving.

6. Rounding: Not sure why this is a step. Seriously, it should be 5a. It’s basically just making the shape you want.

7. Benching: Resting the dough, so the gluten is destressed. Maybe have a beer. (all cooking needs at least one beer step.)

8. Shaping: Sure. Shape it.

9. Proofing (Secondary Fermentation): A second, final rise. Your gluten is strong, your gas is degassed, let’s let the little yeasty boogers puff up your bread some more.

10. Baking: Duh.

11. Cooling: Duh.

12. Storing and Eating: Seriously, there is no step 12.

As hilarious as I am about the 12 steps, that book is really great. You should buy it.

However, we digress. What did the NYTimes do last week? They suggested a bread baking technique that requires no kneading! What? Impossible! How would that work? In those twelve steps, kneading is by far the most hands on time you spend with the dough. If you fidget with your dough for a half hour, kneading is about twenty minutes. The article sounded too good to be true, so we tried it out.

Our example of no-knead bread, from the NYTimes recipe

The article says that they want to get this recipe out, so I’m going to cut and paste it. If you’re reading this, and you work for the New York Times, a) awesome, thanks for reading b) if I’m doing something wrong, please let me know.

Recipe: No-Knead Bread

Published: November 8, 2006

Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising
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3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and
stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic
wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room
temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work
surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it
over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about
15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or
to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat
a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough
seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover
with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready,
dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when
poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees.
Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic)
in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven.
Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up;
it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is
unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and
bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until
loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.

We did vary up the recipe a little bit. We used 8 ounces of organic non-bleached bread flour, four ounces of whole wheat flour, and four ounces of rye flour. (If you’re serious about baking, get yourself a baking scale. The better baking books nowadays give measurements in ounces, not cups. To convert backwards recipes like the above, just say a cup is 4 ounces. Flour volume is really dependent on how packed your flour is. 4 ounces is a gross simplification, so try your best to find recipes with the proper measurements. Volume measurements always assume sifted flour. If you measure by weight, you’re much less likely to use too much or too little flour.) Note the part in the article that says, “this dough is sticky.” Is it ever! After 18 hours, it barely rose, and was like a thick oatmeal. I was convinced that it wouldn’t work.

We finished up the final steps (flouring, second rise), and then dumped it in a very hot steel pot. We don’t have a cast iron or enameled dutch oven, but we do have a stainless steel one. We weren’t sure if it would work, but necessity is the mother of invention, right? I was really worried when the dough hit the steel and sizzled. At that point, I was sure we were a) going to have a loaf of not-bread, and b) going to have a huge clean up mess with our fancy steel dutch oven.

Boy was I wrong.

After a half hour, I took the lid off the dutch oven for the final crust hardening period. It smelled great, and looked like real bread. I was flabbergasted. We finished the bake off, let the bread cool for a while, and were delighted to find a really respectable nice loaf. It didn’t rise nearly as much as I would have liked, but it was bread, and it did taste great. The crumb was nice and even, and the crust was fantastic.

So, death to kneading?

Absolutely not. This was a good article. It can’t hurt to play around with the steps of baking to see what happens, but nothing beats a traditional loaf with proper kneading time. As a species, we’ve been kneading bread for thousands of years, just because you’re the New York Times doesn’t mean you can kick down a good old fashioned knead and expect everyone to change. Kneading bread by hand is something you should do at least once, preferably a thousand times. It’s work, it requires forearm strength, and it feels good. Drink a beer while you’re doing it. It won’t hurt the bread.

The one thing from this recipe that I’ll try again though is baking in a dutch oven. That worked like a champ. The crust on this bread was fantastic. Since this is also the winter of soups, we’re talking about buying a Le Creuset dutch oven for our soups and bread baking. Part of what worked so well for the NYTimes recipe was the amount of water in the dough. The steam inside the dutch oven was what helped the crust to form. I’m not sure what will happen with a traditional loaf inside the hot pot. We’ll just have to try it out and see. Bread is an adventure!