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Chief among these are the dough’s slackness and its propensity to spread into a pancake-like loaf, baking up flat and dense, if even lightly mishandled. That said, I’ve always wanted to take a more organized look at the bread I was baking and to solve some of the issues that I - and other home bakers - have had in the past.
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Then, all it takes is a few well-placed folds to create a ball of dough that is ready to bake into an airy, open loaf. With no-knead bread, this same concept is extended from 20 minutes to 8 to 12 hours.Īs the wet dough rests overnight at room temperature, the enzymes weaken protein bonds so greatly that the simple action of carbon dioxide bubbles moving and stretching through the dough is enough to form a rough gluten network. Autolyse is like leaving a dog or a toddler alone with the Legos: They do the work of breaking them down for you. Before we can start building, we must first break down those shapes into individual bricks. I like to think of dough as haphazardly stuck-together Legos that we are trying to form into an organized city.
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He found that this short rest, during which enzymes in the flour would start weakening protein bonds, greatly reduced the amount of kneading required, while creating a gluten network that was easier to stretch and shape. In 1974, Raymond Calvel, a professor at L’École Nationale Supérieure de Meunerie et des Industries Céréalières in Paris, developed a technique known as autolyse, in which flour and water are mixed together and allowed to rest for a minimum of 20 minutes before salt and yeast are incorporated. But there are other ways to achieve similar or better results. Kneading encourages proteins to rub against one another and entangle. Lahey realized the technique was probably how they made bread in ancient Rome. Lahey started using what would become his no-knead recipe at a James Beard House dinner themed on an ancient Roman cookbook. Reinhart said, adding that he met extreme resistance to the idea when he brought it with him to the United States and introduced similar concepts in “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.”īy the early 2000s, Mr. “I remember Gosselin telling me, ‘When I showed my father, he threw me out of the kitchen. Gosselin, whose father was also a baker, were just starting to rediscover ancient techniques that had largely been displaced by modern commercial yeast and mixers. He said he learned the technique from Philippe Gosselin, who was known for his baguettes. “When I saw that article come out, I laughed, because I wish it had been me,” Mr. Bittman’s article, they had had difficulty explaining its potential to home bakers. Reinhart, along with other bakers, like Ken Forkish of Ken’s Artisan Bakery and Ken’s Artisan Pizza in Portland, Ore., noted that no- or low-knead techniques were known to many professionals at the time. “Eventually, I started doing it without kneading it at all, just a few folds here and there to give it some structure.” “The bread was overproofing, and the solution was to just knead it less,” he said. It speeds up the action of amylase, an enzyme that breaks down starches into simple sugars. That’s it.Īn analysis of Miami water indicated high levels of magnesium sulfate, an inorganic salt found in most tap water and used commercially as a fermentation aid.
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The next day, shape it into a loose loaf, let it proof, then bake it inside a preheated Dutch oven with the lid on. Cover the bowl and let it sit on your counter overnight. The process is simple: Mix flour, water, salt and yeast in a bowl just until they all come together. The no-knead bread recipe accomplished both of those goals simultaneously. “This was the recipe that democratized bread-baking,” says Peter Reinhart, a chef-instructor at Johnson & Wales University and the author of “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice” (Ten Speed Press, 2001).Īs a recipe writer, I consider it a win if I can improve an existing technique, either by making it more simple and foolproof, or by tweaking it to produce markedly superior results. It was Jim Lahey and Mark Bittman’s no-knead bread, then recently published in The New York Times. He cut off a slice, revealing an open, airy hole structure with a moist, custard crumb. I remember the loud snaps and pops coming from the bread as it cooled, the glossy crust crackling. It was a loaf of bread that my fellow test cook David Pazmiño had just transferred to a cooling rack. It was November 2006, and I was a test cook at Cook’s Illustrated magazine in Brookline, Mass., when I walked over to see what my colleagues were gawking at. I remember where I was when the baking revolution began.