Survival Sunday 210: No-Knead White Bread

If you're anything like me, you're a carbovore. Bread is delicious. Yeasted bread is extra delicious. Unfortunately, yeast is an intimidating microorganism and I've been scared of it ever since I tried to make mini white bread loaves and only succeeded in making nice-smelling bricks. That was years ago.

But I think I've cracked the code, guys!

I'm a big fan of King Arthur Flour. I live in the Northeastern USA, so it's one of the more prevalent brands one can get ahold of, and I dig that it's basically employee-owned. Proselytizing aside, it's good flour, and the website is an amateur baker's dream. They have recipes for bread that do not include the most difficult-to-master part of baking: kneading.

I have never been able to tell when I've kneaded that dough properly. It's just not a rhythm I've mastered, and I don't have the time, money, or ingredients to go botching batch after batch until I've got a wall of inedible wheat-bricks in the backyard, waiting to break the mice's teeth.

So finding this recipe was a miracle to my texture-incompetent soul.

No-Knead Crusty White Bread, you have saved my bread-poor baking skills. I can now make at least one kind of bread!

I halved the recipe, so I got two little loaves!
Yes, I marked them 1 and 2...

So how did I do this?

HALVED RECIPE INGREDIENTS:

• 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water (I just ran the tap until it was hot, but not painful, you can use a thermometer to get it to 105℉/40-41℃ if you want!)
• 3 1/2 cups flour (just all-purpose is fine, since bread flour will make it a little tough...)
• 1/2 Tbsp salt
• 1 packet instant or active dry yeast

That's it. 4 ingredients. No butter, milk, or sugar. This is not an enriched bread of any sort. Now, I personally think that adding a hint of honey or butter might improve the flavor, but it's good on its own! Honestly, it has me wondering how it would be with different kinds of flour...

Anywho, the directions are behind the earlier link, so I'll just give you my basic step-by-steps!

My ingredients and most utensils assembled.

Not pictured are the mixing spoon, baking sheet, parchment paper, and plastic wrap...

Here we have our flour in the bowl!

Flour + Salt

Flour, Salt, Yeast. The dry trinity of breadmaking.

I added the water and began stirring. The water should be bathwater warm!
Mine might have been a little cooler than it ought to be, but it could also be that my house was too cool.

Eventually it formed into this sticky ball!

I wrapped it and left it to sit for the correct amount of time.
I even gave it extra time.

I should mention that after I left it to sit for a while, I forgot to take photos of it when it rose and when I put it in the fridge. If I do this again I'll: A) Take more/better photos, B) leave it in the fridge overnight for more sourdough-flavor, and C) make the full batch!

Something else I'll try next time is actually doing the "heat the water pan in the oven during the preheat" thing and then pour in water from the teakettle right before I put the bread in! This time, I just put the hot water in the pan, put it in the oven, formed my loaves, slashed them (2 could have used better slashing skills, I think...), and set the timer...

My loaves are prepared to enter the oven.

Proving that I did the 450℉ preheat & bake like I was told to!

Now, I'm pretty sure that a combination of weather and inexperience made sure these little guys didn't rise too much, but they looked good, smelled great, and tasted wonderful!

I mean, look at the color on loaf 1! Loaf 2 kinda reminds me of a trilobite, and that's cool.

Honestly, though, this bread was easy. I could probably do this again no problem. I would love to try the bucket-technique they mention in the recipe proper. I would love to do more baking, in the future, and King Arthur does seem to have the goods! If you're wondering what happened to these dense, crusty loaves, well...

Z and I demolished Loaf 1 over the course of an hour. My parents are slowly working through Loaf 2. The longer the loaves sat in a ziploc, the less crunchy they were, but that was also good. I like a nice tough crust. Makes me feel like a vegetarian T-Rex. Uh... that's not weird or anything, is it?

I also would like to mention something... nerdy.

One of the ideas I'd had for Survival Sunday was to tackle some of the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild recipes during the month of November, which is Zelda Month, according to YouTuber PeanutButter Gamer. Then I found Sheikah Plate - a blog where an awesome microbiologist in Utah is doing exactly that. And much better than I could. Like... wow she's good!

That being said, if there's any interest in the idea of me trying to make recipes from this video game, feel free to let me know in the comments! I think I might try a different method than her for "salt grilling"...

Anyway, that'll do it for me, today!

Go Enjoy Something!!!

FC