• Dec 18-19, 2014

Jim Lahey No-knead Bread Baking

It has been several months, since I baked with this simple method that produces delicious bread. The no-knead method quickly assembles a bread dough. Very little labor is required. The recipe uses a small amount of dry, instant yeast and a fermentation time of 12 to 18 hours.

I prefer sourdough bread, and my starter turns five-years-old on Jan 30, 2015. But when incorporating some whole grains and/or some stout beer into a no-knead recipe, the overall bread flavor masks any flavor given off by the instant yeast.

This bread turned out really well. Surprisingly so. I figured the costs for the ingredients to total around 85 cents. Of course, I would need to factor in the cost for the natural gas used to heat the oven, but I didn't calc that item at this time.

Dec 18-19, 2014

On Thu evening, Dec 18, 2014, I assembled a bread dough:

• all purpose flour - 300 grams
• white whole wheat flour - 100 grams
• fine-grain sea salt - 8 grams
• instant dry yeast - 1/2 teaspooon
• refrig-temp water - 300 grams

Procedure

• mixed all dry ingredients together in a bowl.
• added water to dry ingredient mix
• mixed dough with whisk and hand to incorporate all ingredients
• once I had a shaggy, sticky blob of dough, I placed dough in a lightly-olive-oiled pyrex bowl, and I covered bowl with plastic
• dough fermented for 15 hours
• lightly-olive-oiled the counter, dumped dough, did a stretch-and-fold, and shaped dough into a log
• proofed dough seam-side down in an oval-shaped basket with a linen cloth for approx 2.5 hours.
• preheated oven with stone at 500 degrees for 40 minutes with the metal bowl in the stove for the last 10 minutes of preheating
• dumped dough and rolled over onto parchment paper, so that seam-side remained down
• slashed dough down the middle, length-wise
• placed dough and paper onto stone, covered with bowl, and sprayed hot water on underside of bowl
• set timer for 35 minutes.
• after 20 minutes of baking, removed lid and lowed oven temp to 475 degrees.
• during the last 15 minutes of baking, rotated the bread a few times to ensure even baking.
• after 33 minutes of baking, turned off oven and let bread continue to warm.
• after 35 minutes, removed bread from oven and placed it onto cooling rack.

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