A couple of months ago, I mentioned that I ordered this book – My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method, by Jim Lahey. Well, now I’ve finally gotten around to trying the basic bread recipe, and here is how it went.
As you can see from the picture on the cover of the book, this bread is baked in a Dutch oven. Jim recommends cast iron, which can be either the regular uncoated variety, or enamel-coated cast iron (such as Le Creuset). Lodge, the leading manufacturer of traditional cast iron, has recently jumped on the enameled cast iron bandwagon, and offers a good selection of pieces in assorted colors. Lodge’s prices for the enameled stuff are also quite a bit lower than those of LeCreuset. In the book, Jim says that if you use Le Creuset, use a screwdriver to remove the handles first, as the manufacturer says they are only oven-safe for up to 375° F, and the oven needs to be much hotter than that. If you do this, plug up the holes with aluminum foil, as the pot needs to be well sealed for this method to work properly.
I don’t have any of the enameled stuff, so I just used my plain old Lodge 5-quart Dutch oven. This is a very versatile piece of cookware, not only can it be used on the stovetop and in the oven…but you could also cook with it on BBQ grills, outdoor fireplaces, even over campfires. If you don’t have one, I suggest getting one…unseasoned ones are pretty cheap and can sometimes still be found at hardware stores. New, unseasoned cast iron is gray in color, rather than black…it will blacken in time after seasoning and repeated use. The pan will come with instructions for seasoning, which must be done before you use the pan.
If you are willing to spend a little more money, Lodge sells pre-seasoned cast iron, under the brand name Lodge Logic. Alternatives to cast iron would be, according to Mark Bittman’s version of the basic recipe, Pyrex or ceramic. However, whatever pan you use MUST have its own lid.
Jim recommends that you try the basic recipe first, before going on to any of the many variations in the book. This makes sense to me, because if you screw up, you are not out a lot of expensive ingredients. The basic recipe calls for nothing more than bread flour, yeast, table salt, and water. And that’s another great thing about this recipe…it costs very little to make!
If you don’t have the book, you can try this using the recipe that Mark Bittman published in the New York Times a few years ago. Click here to see it. There are only two small differences between the recipe in the book and Bittman’s version. Bittman calls for the oven to be heated to 450° F, while in Lahey’s book, it calls for 475°. Lahey says that the recipe will work at this slightly lower temp, though. Bittman calls for 1 5/8 cups water, the book calls for 1 1/3 cups. I used the version in the book…the book does say that you can add more water if needed, if the resulting dough is not sticky enough. The dough really does need to be wet and sticky, this helps provide the *steam* that professional bakers use to get nice, crusty loaves. This is also why the pot you use MUST have its own lid.
Oh, and the salt you use MUST be regular table salt, not Kosher or sea salt.
Mixing the dough takes just a few minutes. What takes the longest is the slow rising…at least 12 hours is recommended, 18 hours is better, but in cold weather, when dough rises slower, a full 24 hours is best. My kitchen is kind of drafty, and it’s cold here, so I let it sit for 24 hours.
The next step is to shape it into a ball…it will still be rather stick and messy…and wrap it in a cotton towel or large cloth napkin. Don’t use terry cloth because it will not only stick, but some of the fibers could get into the dough, and that is not good.
If you have cats, put the wrapped dough someplace cat-proof for the second rising. I made the mistake of leaving mine out on the counter, and when I went to check on it, I found that Allegria was using it for a bed. So I had to re-shape it and start the rise all over again. This time, I stashed it in a lidded pot (not the one I was planning to bake it it, as that pot needs to be heated in the oven for 1/2 hour before putting the dough in it and baking).
The dough didn’t look all that great when I plopped it into the hot Dutch oven, but as Bittman says, that really is okay. This is supposed to be a rustic, artisan loaf, not cookie-cutter bread from the store.
Anyhoo, this is what my loaf looked like when it was done. I was so sure that it had caught on fire in the pot in the oven, as when I opened the oven to remove the lid, it looked like there was smoke coming out of it. And when it was done and I removed it from the pan to cool, it was rock-hard…I was so sure that it would not be any good, and it would make for an excellent doorstop.
But after letting it cool on the rack for an hour, I cut into it, and was not disappointed. The crust was nice and crispy, the inside was perfect and tasted pleasantly yeasty, from the long rising period. It was so good, that I didn’t even bother to put butter or anything on it. You don’t need to.
My loaf didn’t rise quite as much as the loaves pictured in the book. Next time, when I do the second rise, I’m going to try putting the wrapped ball of dough in the covered pot on one of the heat vents on the floor so it gets some more warmth. Maybe that will make it rise better. Another possibility that I may try is to program my bread machine so that it only does a RISE cycle, no mixing, kneading, baking. The RISE cycle on a bread machine simulates the warmth of a “proof box” that is used in professional bakeries. I’ll have to dig out the manual for my machine, and see if such programming is possible, I know it has options to program your own stuff.
Anyhoo, please give this a try. Yeah, you have to wait for what seems like forever for your first loaf to be ready. But since it takes just a few minutes to mix up the dough, if you get into the habit of making dough every day, you can have fresh-baked bread every day, bread that is far better than commercial bread or even bread machine loaves!
