Not kneading dough

[KyleW]

We're counting on you Risa!

[Suzanne Dunaway]

Oops. lost my reply. So, to finish up: When I teach a class, and I have taught many, I am trying to interest students in making their own breads at home and I wish to dispel the fear that many have of baking, plus dispel the myths and mystique of bread which often give the novice baker the sense that unless he or she makes 14 day starter and uses spring water and grind his or her own flour that the bread will fail. Nonsense. I can teach a complete novice how to make a good, tasty, chewy and memorable bread in 90 minutes. So, there's my take on kneading, and yes, I do it for brioche, banging the dough, crashing the dough, slapping the dough against my granite board with gusto! But brioche is not ciabatta. Give me a good open-structured, wood oven tasting bread anyday.

[KyleW]

Thank you for joining our discussion Suzanne It seems a shame that the bulk of you message is floating around in CyberSpace. I think I get your point though. We here at ChefTalk are a pretty adventurous lot. When it comes to bread we ain't ascared a nuthin! On the contrary, we are a curious lot and love to learn new things.

There are some who would have you believe that baking bread is a complicated process that requires strict attention to detail, that any deviation form the rules will result in disaster. Thankfully there are others, like yourself, that make the matter of bread baking approachable and enjoyable

[momoreg]

Suzanne, I'm glad you could join us here, and I look forward to future posts by you. I'll have to look for your book in the stores.

A warm welcome to cheftalk!

[kokopuffs]

Suzanne:

May I say that I tackled breadmaking by purchasing a 50 pound bag of all purpose flour from a local organic mill, a Kitchen Aid mixer, and a 1 pound bag of SAF Red Instant yeast. And I had at it. It's been a great experience.

May I recommend that you inform your students that they, too, can get 50 pound bags of all purpose flour - even King Arthur flour - from their local food distributor. The distributors do, indeed, sell retail. And the flour should cost about $15 or less per 50 pound sack.

[Risa]

Preliminary Report:

I made the foccaccia dough from No Need to Knead last night. It took less than 10 minutes to mix and I only messed up one bowl and one wooden spoon. I baked half last night and half this morning. The one that was in the fridge overnight didn't get much oven spring, but I didn't bring it to room temperature before baking. It still tasted good and had plenty of holes in the crumb. The one I baked last night had lots of oven spring and nice, great big holes. Both have a very moist and tender crumb. I brought them both to work this morning and they're getting raves. This recipe is definitely better than the one in Best Recipes and on par with the sourdough one in Breads from LaBrea. The flavour really wasn't all that different and these were much less chewy and much easier to digest. Actually, I'd say it has the edge over the LaBrea foccaccia because it was so much faster to make. I didn't even spray the oven and it still developed a crisp yet chewy crust.

I have a Sourdough Caraway Rye dough currently fermenting in the fridge that I will bake tonight for dinner. I think that will be a better test.

[KyleW]

Sounds good so far!

[Risa]

I made the sourdough caraway rye last night and it's delicious. It was good enough to make me crave pastrami. I don't usually buy any sort of processed meats, but the bread was just calling for some pastrami and dill pickles. I've never made rye bread before, so all I can compare it against is supermarket rye bread and it's definitely better than that. It doesn't have the crisp, crackly crust but the crumb was moist and creamy. I'll definitely be making this again. I'll experiment with shapes next time. The skillet pan shape isn't so good for sandwiches.

Score: 2 for 2 in recipes tried out of No Need to Knead.

[KyleW]

Risa - based on your success, the book is on its way. Any new reports?

[Risa]

I'm more interested to hear about your results since you are more of a bread officianado. I don't eat all that much bread. I just like baking.

One thing I didn't like about the book was that I missed shaping the loaves. I just love shaping boules. However, this is the book I would turn to if I need to have good bread quickly.

[KyleW]

I can see where shaping her dough would be a challenge. From what I gather, kneadless doughs are very wet, slack doughs. These tend to be better suited for free form breads like ciabatta.