My No-Touch technique allows you to make No-Knead bread without ever touching the dough. Your first touch will be placing the finished loaf on a cooling rack.
The following assumes that you're looking at the Cooks Illustrated Almost No-Knead Recipe or Jim Lahey's recipe as published in the New York Times No-Knead Bread Recipe.Day 1
I often start this in the evening with a quick no-touch knead the next morning. I do another no-touch knead at noon and put the bread in the oven at 2pm. It's out of the oven at 3pm and ready to eat by 5pm. Note: The rise can be suspended at any time (other than the final 2 hour rise) by putting the dough in the refrigerator.
- Place empty bowl on scale and zero.
- Add 15 ounces of all-purpose flour. It generally gives better results in no-knead recipes than bread flour.
- Add 1/4 teaspoon of yeast. I've found that a 4-oz jar of Fleischmanns' Bread Machine yeast works well. I keep it in the freezer and scoop out 1/4 teaspoon as needed. My jar is 6 months old and the yeast still works. (The jar is a lot easier than dealing with partial foil packets.)
- Add 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
- Add 7 ounces by weight of room temperature water
- Add 3 ounces of beer by weight to make 10 ounces. The water/beer ratio can be varied as long as it's a total of 10 ounces. I typically use Michelob Amber Bock. You can store the leftover beer in an air tight container. The beer will work in this recipe even if it's flat--you're adding it for the flavor not the carbonation.
- Add 1 tablespoon white vinegar.
- Use the Zyliss Spreader to combine the ingredients. The extra water in the no-knead recipes makes this easy. This photo shows the final consistency of the dough. If the dough is stiff and hard to mix, add a tiny bit more water. A teaspoon can make a big difference.
- Cover the bowl with a lid or plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature for roughly 12 hours.
The elapsed time including cleanup is less than 5 minutes (not counting the time to gather the ingredients). Cleanup is simply putting ingredients away, shaking flour off the whisk, and rinsing the measuring spoons and spreader.
Day 2 (or after 8-12 hours) This is an optional working of the dough.
This working isn't necessary but it tends to create smaller air bubbles spread more evening throughout the final loaf. It moves the loaf in the direction of a hearty sandwich bread away from an artisan loaf with large air bubbles.
Note: This optional knead to knock down air-holes is much more important in the summer. I keep the house at 66° in the winter and 76° in the summer. This makes a huge difference in how fast the bread rises, the texture of the bread, and the size of the holes. The winter bread is better. Adding 25% to 50% whole wheat flour also helps with the summer texture issue.
- Dump the dough out of the bowl onto a silicon baking or pastry mat. I don't need to flour my Silpat baking mat.
- Use the Zyliss Spreader to punch-down large air bubbles, and fold the edges into the middle. Fold the dough, rotate 90°, and fold again. The dough will quickly become compact, firm, and round. Only a few folds are possible, then it's just pulling the dough towards the center for about a minute. There's no need to touch the dough during this process--I call it no-touch no-knead.
- Use the mat to dump the dough back into the bowl. Your hands have never touched the dough!
Note: You can refrigerate the dough at any time (other than the final 2 hour rise) to suspend the process. When I remove it from the refrigerator, I let the dough warm up for an hour and then give it a quick no-touch knead. (More than two quick no-touch kneads don't hurt the bread but more than two don't help much either.)
Allow the dough to rise for another 4-6 hours after the first no-touch knead. (A total of 12-18 hours or more.)
- Use the Zyliss Spreader and repeat the no-touch knead process described above. The dough is now more elastic than it was during the earlier working.
- Fit and form a piece of parchment paper inside a bowl that's roughly the same width as your baking container. I use pre-cut and folded parchment circles made for Dutch ovens.
- Remove the parchment from the bowl and spray the inside of the parchment with non-stick spray.
- Use the baking mat to dump the dough onto the parchment.
- Lift the parchment and dough and place into the bowl.
- Cover with a lid or plastic wrap.
- Allow to rise for about 2 hours until doubled in size. If it hasn't doubled and its approaching 3 hours, it's time to bake--that's probably all it's going to rise.
- Thirty minutes before the end of the 2 hour rise, place a small Dutch oven with lid onto the bottom rack of your oven and preheat to 500° Make sure the handles on your Dutch oven can withstand 500° heat. MANY CAN'T!
- Remove the Dutch oven to a heat proof surface. Lift the parchment/dough out of the bowl, slash the top (optional) and place the parchment/dough into the Dutch oven. Put the cover on the Dutch oven and return to the oven, reduce heat to 425° and bake for 30 minutes or so.
- Remove the lid from the Dutch oven and bake for another 30 minutes. For me, the temperature plateaus about 208° although my thermometer registers 210° in boiling water. Unless the crust is getting too dark, I'll leave the bread in the oven for another 5-10 minutes once it hits 208°. If the temperature hits, 209°I take it out of the oven.
Once cut, the bread will keep for a day or so--wrap the cut edge with foil leaving most of the crust uncovered. Store with the foil side down at room temperature. The bread is best within 24 hours but still makes good toast after three or four days.
You can tightly wrap and freeze the cooled loaf or a half. Thaw for a couple of hours at room temperature--check occasionally to make sure moisture isn't condensing inside the wrapping. If so, rewrap.
A finished loaf after cooling. It's
Here are the first three slices.
Here's a center slice. It's 4 inches tall.
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