Better No-Knead Bread Recipe.

Better No-Knead Bread Recipe | Serious Eats:

Today bread!

Let's take a quick look through a time lapse of the dough as it sits overnight.
- 0 Hours: dough is still lumpy. Gluten formation is minimal.
- 4 Hours: Enzymatic action has broken down some proteins, causing the dough to slacken and spread.
- 8 Hours: Yeast has produced quite a bit of carbon dioxide. As these bubbles slowly grow, their stretching causes proteins around their edges to align with each other.
- 12 Hours: Slowly but surely, the bubbles moving through the dough, effectively forming the same gluten that would be formed by manual labor.
- 16 Hours: The yeast have completed their task, both leavening and kneading the dough for you. Thanks guys!

After allowing it to rise at room temperature overnight, I'll stick mine directly into the refrigerator for three days. There's another advantage built into this as well: cold dough is much easier to handle. Gluten gets stiffer as it cools, which means that refrigerated dough will be much simpler to shape into a ball or a long loaf, or whatever shape you wish to bake it in.

After shaping, cover is with a bowl or a flour-coated kitchen towel and let it rise at room temperature for a couple of hours to take the chill off it and leaven for the final time before slashing it with a sharp knife (this allows it to expand faster in the Dutch oven, and makes it look pretty), and baking.

If you want to make your life even easier, get yourself a good gram scale to allow you to easily calculate ingredients without having to dirty up measuring spoons, cups, or bowls. Using a scale and a metal bowl, you can make bread and end up with only a single bowl to wash!

Here's the basic method I use:

To 100 parts flour,
add 1.5 parts salt and
1 part instant yeast.
Whisk those together.
Add 70 parts water, and stir to combine.
Cover, then let rise overnight.
Transfer to the fridge, let ferment for three days, then turn dough out on to a well-floured surface.
Shape dough, sprinkle with flour, and cover with a floured cloth.
Let it rise for at least two hours and up to 4 at room temperature.
Slah, then bake in a preheated 230°C/450°F Dutch Oven for 15 minutes with the lid on.
Remove the lid, and continue baking until it hits around 100°C209°F, 30 minutes or so.
Let it cool.

Today bread!
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- Better No-Knead Bread Recipe | Serious Eats:
- The Food Lab: The Science of No-Knead Dough | Serious Eats:

- Bread baking in a Dutch oven - Flourish - King Arthur Flour:
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