I’ve been making the No Knead Bread recipe, by Jim Lahey, made famous by The New York Times and Mark Bittman for a while now. I have also been making the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day recipe, watch our original artisan bread recipe video here. In this video I show you an improved way to make the No Knead Bread and the Artisan Bread Recipes. Flipping the dough has always been a problem for me, and now I’m using parchment paper. You can watch our original video ‘How to bake bread with the No Knead Bread Recipe” here. Watch the video and let me know your suggestions and thoughts below, thanks!
Today we learn how to bake bread the Artisan Bread way. I picked up Zoe Francois and Jeff Hertzberg’s great book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, after reading about it in Alexandra Stafford’s food blog Alexandra Cooks. So we fired up the Gardenfork kitchen to see what would happen. Baking bread is not hard, even I can do it. Watch here and see how we make bread based on Zoe and Jeff’s concept, which is a bit like Jim Leahy’s No Knead Bread, but different. I like what they are doing to spread the word about making your own food.
So, what does one of these loaves cost to prepare? Using the price of flour given by the American Farm Bureau — a 5-lb. bag of flour costs on average $2.39 — and prices for yeast and salt listed at Henry’s Market — a 3-lb. pound box of kosher salt costs $3.49 and a three-pack of yeast costs $2.39 — a one-pound loaf of homemade artisan bread costs about 60 cents to prepare from scratch. (Flour costs about 3 cents per ounce; yeast, 35 cents per teaspoon; and salt, 1 cent per teaspoon.) Using Henry’s Market prices, too, this estimate of 60 cents is likely on the high side.
The average price of a loaf of La Brea bread is almost nine times more expensive. Even the cheapest loaf of bakery-style bread, priced at $1.29 a pound, costs over twice as much as a loaf of homemade bread. Upon closer analysis it seems the man who called into the radio program actually might be on to something.
Even if saving money is not your goal, however, give this recipe a stab purely to experience how truly simple bread making at home can be. I’m dying to try other recipes in this book such as roasted red pepper fougasse, Italian semolina, and sun-dried tomato parmesan but for now, I’m extremely happy with the results of this master boule: It’s perfectly salty, moist and airy and delectable all around.
What do you think? Can you bake your own bread in this modern crazy world? Watch us try. Below is the 2nd video we did on Artisan Bread, and the basic recipe.
Here is the basic recipe as adapted by me, the Artisan Bread book has a ton more stuff in it, you should go buy it.
3 cups warm water
1 1/2 tablespoons yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons coarse salt
6 1/2 cups all purpose unbleached flour
In a large plastic food container with a lid, add together the water, yeast and salt
mix this up, then add in the flour, mix together.
all the flour needs to be wet, but no over-mixed
place this container in a warm area and let it rise for 2 hours,
then you can use some of the dough,
or better yet,
put the container in the refrigerator overnight, the dough will have a better flavor.
pull off a hunk of the dough, shape it into a ball, let it rise on parchment paper in a bowl for 40 minutes,
preheat the oven with the dutch oven and lid in the oven at 450F
when you are ready to put the dough in the dutch oven, use a razor blade to slice a few lines through the top of the ball of dough
take out the dutch oven, place the parchement paper with the dough in the dutch oven.
put in oven for 30 minutes,
then remove lid of dutch oven, and bake for about 20 minutes more.
bread should have a hollow sound when thumped when it is done.
I’ve been making the No Knead Bread, invented by Jim Lahey and made famous by Mark Bittman, and this time I used 1 cup of all purpose flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1 cup bread flour. All King Arthur brand flours. Worked well. Not a lot of rise, but it was cold in the house this weekend.
Sullivan Bakery Bread, The No Knead Bread Recipe, the Gardenfork version
I’ve made this bread about 20 times now, and it comes out great every time. I’ve learned a few things doing this. It really helps that the dough be in a warm place during the long rise time. I let it sit overnight, so I bring it up to the bedroom, as the rest of the house cools down at night ( thanks to our programmed thermostats ).
A viewer emailed me to say that you can also put the dough in the oven and leave the oven light bulb turned on, this will keep it warm enough as well. You don’t have to turn on the oven itself, just the oven light.
3 cups all purpose flour. I use King Arthur brand flour.
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 tablespoon salt
Cornmeal, preferably coarse ground.
Mix together flour, yeast, and salt in a large bowl. Add 1 1/2 cups of warm water ( about 100 degrees ).
Mix with a spatula. The dough will look like it needs more water. It doesn’t. Mark Bittman has the best word to describe it, the dough will look “shaggy”
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in a warm spot for about 12 hours. You can let it rise longer if you want. The dough will have a good amount of bubbles in it.
Get out two large cutting boards.
Flour a large cutting board and turn the dough out onto the board with the spatula.
Put a clean towel on the other board and dust the towel with cornmeal.
Take the dough, dust it with a bit of flour and fold it over on itself front to back and side to side.
Then turn the ball of dough so the folds are on the bottom and place in the center of the towel dusted with cornmeal.
Fold the towel ends over the dough and let rise for about 2 hours. The dough should roughly double in size. The dough will not rise up a lot, but will grow outward on the board.
30 minutes before its time to bake the bread, put your dutch oven in the oven with the cover on, preheat the oven to 450 F.
When the dough has risen and the oven is preheated, remove the dutch oven, put it on a wire rack next to the dough on the towel which is on the cutting board.
Slide your hand under the towel and dough, lift up the dough and flip it over into the dutch oven. What you want is the folds of the dough, -what was on the bottom of the dough during the rise – to be on top when it sits in the dutch oven.
Be careful doing this as the dutch oven is very hot.
The dough never lands perfectly in the middle of the dutch oven. I use a wooden spatula to gently nudge it toward the center, pushing down any part of the dough that may be sticking to the side of the dutch oven.
Cover the dutch oven and place in oven for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, remove cover, the dough should look like bread and be starting to brown. Remove the cover and bake for another 15 minutes.
The bread should now look like great bread. The crust should be golden brown. You can bake it longer if need be.
When done, remove bread from dutch oven and cool on a wire rack.
You can double this recipe, but be careful with the water, add not quite twice the amount of water, you can always add more.
NEW INFO
my house is quite cool in the winter, and i remember someone suggesting putting the dough in the oven with the oven turned off, but the oven light turned on. so first I had to finally fix the oven light in our 50’s era propane stove salvaged from a Vagabond camper trailer. I fixed the light, and left the dough in the oven overnight with the light on.
Being the gadget geek, I put in my temperature probe to see at what temperature the dough would maintain. It stays at about 78 F. Great.
