No-Knead Bread

Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread

I've gotten into bread making recently. Or more accurately, Stefan's mom, Karen has gotten me into bread making. The three of us were on our way to the first-ever Los Angeles Fermentation Festival, discussing one of the classes we wanted to attend on making sourdough bread (sourdough bread gets its distinctive flavor from the fermentation of flour, water and yeast). I mentioned offhandedly that I had just bought baguette pans so I could start making and shaping sourdough bread.

Critical error. Just...a really big mistake.

Karen is an expert bread maker, and before I could finish my sentence she told me that I "had a lot to learn" (only Karen and my mom can tell someone they have a lot to learn without offending. But it hurts. Bad.). One does not use a baguette pan for shaping baguettes; one uses a couche. She then offered to teach me how to make bread, and we had a lesson set up within the week. She also told me I had some required reading to do (required reading!), and the next morning I had four 300+ page books in my inbox with instructions on how to open said books on my iPad. One of them involved science.

If you know my mom, you know that this sounds like...well, my mom. I obviously loved it.

Our first lesson was on Model Bakery's English muffins. More on those later. Today is about Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread. This is a 24-hour-ish bread, which is pretty standard in the realm of bread making. But it's so much easier than normal bread! There are essentially three steps, but every chef knows to double the purported work involved so that the people eating your food love and admire you. Et voila:

Step 1

Mix the flour, yeast and salt. This works best in a Tiffany-blue mixer.

Christmas gift from my mom. Thanks, mom. Thom.

Step 2

Add 1 5/8 cups water. Hilarious. Jim really means 1 1/2 cups + 2 tablespoons.  

5/8 cups. That guy.  

Step 3

Turn your mixer on.  

Step 4

Turn your mixer off.

Step 5

What you do in real life: Wait 18 hours.

What you tell people you did: Lots of kneading and shaping. This was hard and a lot of work and not everyone can do it.

Steps 6-8

Dump the dough out of the bowl, wait a few minutes. Then wait 2 hours. Then put the dough into a round, 4-quart, Staub cast iron pot in grenadine and bake the shit out of it for 60 minutes.  

A note on the 2-hour rise: Jim directs the baker to leave the soggy little dough ball on a well-floured towel. This is a trick designed to glue the ball to the towel; don't do it. Put the ball on a piece of floured parchment paper, instead. 

A round, 4-quart Staub cast iron pot in grenadine (that's shape, size, brand, type, and color) as specified by Karen.  

Bread mid-rise. Will all that flour turn into dough in my washing machine? Yes.