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Monday, March 1, 2010
Week of Eating In: I’m a no knead bread convert
I’ve been skeptical of this no knead bread trend that came about a few years ago.
Many bakers have praised Jim Lahey’s ridiculously simple no knead bread recipe that calls for combining flour, yeast, salt and water and letting it ferment on the counter for 12 to 18 hours. Lahey’s technique requires almost no contact with the dough before it bakes in the oven.
Last year, I waxed on about how much I love baking bread for its long and tedious process, at the heart of which is kneading the dough.
I wrote: “The rhythm of baking bread forces me to slow down, to think about how my great-great-grandmothers in Sweden made bread every day not because it was meditative, but because you couldn’t buy good bread that didn’t come in a plastic bag tied with a plastic-coated wire.”
But the truth is, even though I love the bread-making process, I rarely find time for it outside the occasional weekend baking fest.
Cathy Erway of Not Eating Out in New York is one of the no knead fanatics, and she wrote so favorably about the technique in her book “The Art of Eating In” that I had to try my own version during last week’s eating in challenge.
I made Lahey’s straight up loaf instead of Erway’s famous cheese and peppercorn bread (recipe below), but I could not have been more impressed with the results.
The dough is much more wet than most bread doughs — food scientist Harold McGee explained how this works in last week’s New York Times — so I had to resist the urge to add more flour as I went.
After pouring the fermented dough onto a floured surface and sprinkling it with flour, you fold the dough on top of itself twice and then let rest for 15 minutes.
After 15 minutes, place the dough on a floured cotton dishcloth, cover and let rise for 2 hours.
After 30 minutes in a covered Dutch oven inside an 450 degree oven, this is what the bread looked like.
Another 15 minutes, I pulled this golden brown loaf out of the Dutch oven, but it wasn’t until I cut into it and found a rustic yet tender and airy center that I realized what everyone has been raving about.
It’s not that kneading the bread is a chore, but rarely does any loaf — kneaded or not — come out with this texture and flavor. The long fermentation time means that the yeast has had time to completely convert carbohydrates into alcohol and carbon dioxide gas, which gives the bread its wonderful air pockets and flavor.
I can’t wait to experiment with adding small amounts of whole wheat flour and herbs, spices and cheese.
Have you played around with no knead dough recipes or are you still skeptical? What are your favorite ways to personalize it?
Peppercorn, Potato and Parmesan No-Knead Bread
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1/4 tsp. active dry yeast
1 1/2 tsp. salt
About 3 Tbsp. black peppercorns, cracked
1 5/8 cups water that was used to boil a potato, slightly cooled
Parmesan for topping
In a large bowl, combine the flour, yeast, salt, and peppercorns. Add the water and stir until blended; the dough will be shaggy and sticky.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rest at least 12 hours (preferably about 18 hours or two days) at warm room temperature (about 70 degrees). The dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles.
Lightly flour a work surface and place the dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover the dough loosely with plastic wrap and let it rest about 15 minutes.
Using just enough flour to keep the dough from sticking to the work surface or your fingers, gently and quickly shape the dough into a ball, tucking the folded parts underneath. Sprinkle and gently pat the grated Parmesan across the top of the loaf. Generously coat a clean cotton dishtowel (not terry cloth) with flour, semolina, or cornmeal, and place the loaf seam-side down on it. Coat another cotton towel with flour, cover the loaf, and let the dough rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, the dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
At least half an hour before the dough is ready, preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to -8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enameled cast iron, or ceramic) in the oven while the oven is preheating.
When the dough is ready, carefully remove the pot from the oven. Slide your hand under the towel and place the dough, Parmesan side up, in the pot. Cover with the lid and bake 20 minutes, then remove the lid and bake another 15 minutes, until the loaf is beautifully browned. Remove from the pan and cool completely on a rack.
— Cathy Erway, “The Art of Eating In”
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Week of Eating In: A chance to dive into ‘Joy of Cooking’
File this one under Kitchen Confession: Until this past week, I hadn’t cooked from Irma Rombauer’s epic “Joy of Cooking.”
For a food writer, this is one of the ultimate sins (right up there with not owning Le Creuset cookware and refusing to cook with celery, both of which I’m also guilty of). I’m a “How to Cook Everything” girl myself, but Rombauer’s book is a classic, having been in print continuously since 1936 and sold more than 18 million copies.
I found an extra copy of “Joy” in the Statesman’s cookbook stash recently, and last week’s challenge to eat in for a week gave me the perfect excuse to start exploring.
As soon as I started flipping through the book, I realized why it was so important to so many people. Mark Bittman’s might claim to show you how to cook everything, but Rombauer’s is probably a little closer to the truth.
On Sunday, Julian and I made pancakes, or flapjacks, as he insisted after reading a book that called them that. Instead of making the pancakes from scratch (thank you, Hungry Man), I opted to make blueberry syrup from a recipe from “Joy” that called for lemon zest and cinnamon sticks. I added a few blackberries to the mix because we had some in the freezer.
Everyone loved the results so much that no one even reached for the regular syrup.
Blueberry syrup
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup syrup
1 cup blueberries (or any kind of berries)
1 1-inch piece of cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp. grated lemon zest
1 Tbsp. dark rum or port (optional)
Bring water and sugar to a boil in a small saucepan. Add blueberries, cinnamon stick, lemon zest and port. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer 10 minutes until thickened.
— From “Joy of Cooking” by Irma Rombauer
While digging around the bread-baking section, I saw a recipe for bread made with sprouted seeds, which lead me to an entire entry on all the kinds of seeds you can sprout.
Seed sprouting is considered as hippie as patchouli these days, but Rombauer must have known how tasty, easy-to-make and good-for-you sprouted beans and seeds can be. At her suggestion, I started sprouting mustard and fenugreek seeds that had been sitting in my spice cabinet and millet that has been gathering dust in my pantry.
After just two days, the fenugreek seeds had already sprouted and the mustard seeds were just starting to burst out.
It’s easy to find alfalfa and bean sprouts at the grocery store, and the sprouts you make at home, which of course cost a fraction of those in the store, can be used in the same way. I’ll be putting these sprouts on sandwiches, in stir frys and hopefully in a loaf of bread like Ms. Rombauer suggested.
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