Saturday Surprise — Bread recipe!

March 21, 2020

I’ve been baking bread for a few years. I have a ton of bread baking cookbooks, but this is the recipe I keep coming back to because it is so easy. It’s a combination of the recipe from Ken Forkish’s wonderful bread BIBLE — Flour Water Salt Yeast — and my own experimentation with other “no knead” recipes.

Because I bake bread frequently-ish, I have all the specialty kitchen tools which you’ll see in the pictures, but you don’t HAVE to have them to make this bread! Truly the only required tool is a dutch oven (one of those enameled pots with a lid that can take high heat), an actual oven and PATIENCE. While this looks like a ton of steps, it’s really NOT. I documented everything so hopefully it’s clear and not confusing. I promise you this is so so easy!

RECIPE FOR LOW KNEAD SOURDOUGH BREAD

3 cups flour*

1/4 teaspoon yeast

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

1 cup room temp water

1/2 cup any type of room temp beer

1 1/2 Tablespoons any type of vinegar

*I use whatever flour I have on hand, whether it is all-purpose or bread flour. I haven’t tried this recipe with self-rising flour so no clue if that’d work.

For the honey wheat sourdough, I substituted 1 cup of whole wheat flour for the white flour and added 1/4 cup of honey.

You’ll need to mix this in a container with a tight fitting lid because it will double in size.

1)Combine dry ingredients and stir with a whisk.

2) Add water, beer and vinegar. Mix this by hand. (I wear gloves in this step because I had an unfortunate incident where one of my nails popped off ) The dough will be sticky and look like this. If it seems too dry, add more water or vinegar a little at a time. But again, this dough is sticky! I usually end up adding a bit more liquid at this step because I err on the side of dryer dough rather than wetter dough if that makes sense.

3) Put the lid on, shove it in a corner on your countertop and forget about it for 18 hours. Yes, you read that right, this dough needs to rise for a minimum of 18 hours. Trust me, the wait is worth it. I let this dough rise for 48 hours and that made all the difference in souring the dough. This next pic shows you how the dough expands during the wait.

4) So you’ve patiently waited 18-48 hours…now it’s time to GENTLY scrape the dough out of the container onto a floured surface.

This dough will STILL be sticky.

5) Sprinkle flour on the top of the dough but only use enough flour to make it a little more pliable.  Fold the outer edges into the center, rotate and repeat. Flip, rotate and repeat. I usually do about 4 turns and one flip until the dough can hold itself together. This is the beauty of this recipe, it needs very little kneading. Do not overwork the dough.

In the picture below, you’ll see the dough in a “proofing basket” that I prepped with nonstick cooking spray and dusted with flour. ANY bowl will work.

See how the dough still looks lumpy? Eh. That’s why it’s called artisan bread. Besides, this will be the BOTTOM of the loaf, not the top.

6)Next, cover the dough with plastic wrap, or a lightweight cotton towel–either works. We have a gigantic roll of industrial sized plastic wrap since we use it so much in all our cooking, so that’s what you’ll see in the next pic.

When I decide to bake, I usually mix up 2 batches. And I haven’t had good luck doubling batches, so I mix them separately — plus I get 2 different kids of bread that I can bake at the same time! In addition to this white sourdough, I also made honey wheat sourdough. With wheat bread, I use a different shaped proofing bowl and cook it in a clay pot.

NOW, while the dough is making its final rise to glory 🙂 – get out your dutch oven. These are the two I used:

7) Put your dutch oven with the lid on, in your oven, and turn the oven on to 425. Leave it in there for an hour while the dough rises. Yes, the hour timeframe with the dutch oven in the oven is necessary to get that crunchy outer crust and moist interior for your bread.

8) Now comes the tricky part where you have to be very careful not to burn yourself. Take the dutch oven out and set it on a trivet or potholders and remove the lid. Tip the dough out of the proofing basket/bowl into the dutch oven. I’m including pics of both I kinds I made so you have an idea of what the dough looks like after it’s proofed and before it bakes:

It kind of looks like a loaf!

9) CAREFULLY put the lid back on the dutch oven (remember the lid is 425 degrees too!) and return the dutch oven to the center of the oven.

10) Bake for 30 minutes.

11) Take the lid off the dutch oven and bake for 10 more minutes.

12) Then take it out and tip the bread onto a cooling rack. You will be amazed to see that your bread looks like this!

Now the hardest part is letting the bread cool — I know you’ll want to eat it right away, but wait at least an hour. The interior will have time to cool and not get gummy. One fun thing about the cooling stage? You can actually hear the bread cracking as it cools.

Slice and enjoy! Then share pics all over social media about your wonderful loaf and feel NO GUILT WHATSOEVER that it was super easy as well as delicious.

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