OT No-knead bread

I bought some organic 7-grain flour from our local
farmer's market on Saturday, That's right farmer's
market, they move it inside the mall during November
and there was still plenty of squash, brussels sprouts,
eggs and even some mixed salad greens they've managed
to keep out of the frost.

Gonna try my hand at a 7-grain bread since the others
have turned out so well. I'm even thinking about getting
a flour mill and grinding my own flour from whole grains,
that's how impressed I am with this bread making method.

Anybody else try it yet ?

--
Ken Fortenberry

Ken Fortenberry wrote in news:mGk8h.8629
:

I bought some organic 7-grain flour from our local
farmer's market on Saturday, That's right farmer's
market, they move it inside the mall during November
and there was still plenty of squash, brussels sprouts,
eggs and even some mixed salad greens they've managed
to keep out of the frost.

Gonna try my hand at a 7-grain bread since the others
have turned out so well. I'm even thinking about getting
a flour mill and grinding my own flour from whole grains,
that's how impressed I am with this bread making method.

Anybody else try it yet ?


I haven't tried no-knead breads. There was a time that I made bread just
about every weekend for more than two years, using a kitchen-aid with a
dough hook, so hand-kneading was non-existant. Before you get into milling
your own flour, I'd recommend picking up some big mixer with a hook.
Variety is the spice of life, and I suspect you'll soon be questing the
perfect loaf. No-Knead ain't gonna be it. Wheat berries can wait.

--
Scott
Reverse name to reply

Scott Seidman wrote:
Ken Fortenberry wrote in news:mGk8h.8629
:

I bought some organic 7-grain flour from our local
farmer's market on Saturday, That's right farmer's
market, they move it inside the mall during November
and there was still plenty of squash, brussels sprouts,
eggs and even some mixed salad greens they've managed
to keep out of the frost.

Gonna try my hand at a 7-grain bread since the others
have turned out so well. I'm even thinking about getting
a flour mill and grinding my own flour from whole grains,
that's how impressed I am with this bread making method.

Anybody else try it yet ?

I haven't tried no-knead breads. There was a time that I made bread just
about every weekend for more than two years, using a kitchen-aid with a
dough hook, so hand-kneading was non-existant. Before you get into milling
your own flour, I'd recommend picking up some big mixer with a hook.
Variety is the spice of life, and I suspect you'll soon be questing the
perfect loaf. No-Knead ain't gonna be it. Wheat berries can wait.

I've got a Kitchen-Aid and a dough hook and I've tried my hand
at bread baking over the years. I have found the perfect loaf,
or as close to the perfect loaf as I'm likely ever to achieve
at home, and no-knead is it. Seriously, you should try it, I
posted the recipe in a thread called Two Things. The no-knead
method produces a bakery quality boule right out of your home
oven. No kidding.

--
Ken Fortenberry

Ken Fortenberry wrote:
Scott Seidman wrote:
I haven't tried no-knead breads.
... The no-knead
method produces a bakery quality boule right out of your home
oven. No kidding.

http://wednesdaychef.typepad.com/the...heys_nokn.html

Try it, you'll like it.

--
Ken Fortenberry - True Believer

In article ,
says...
Anybody else try it yet ?


I did. Well, sort of, anyway.

We had a sourdough starter sitting dormant in the fridge, and it needed
rousing so we can make a few loaves to take along to Thanksgiving dinner
this week. So, Saturday afternoon, I started up a sponge (2 cups
sourdough starter, 2 cups flour, 2 cups water) and let it set out on
the counter in a larger ceramic bowl overnight.

Sunday at noon, I made the dough (the sponge, about 2 Tbspn Kosher salt,
2 more cups of flour plus another cup of flour for kneading) which I
kneaded by hand for about 10 minutes or so. I tried to keep it fairly
moist and sticky. Let this rise until the Vikings game was over.
(Speaking of which, before the season, I prognosticated that the Vikes
would do well to finish 8-8 this year, and they seem bent on proving
that they can fail to live up to even modest expectations...)

Then I punched the dough down, divided it into halves, and formed two
round loaves, which I then let rise for another 2 hours. When I pre-
heated the oven, I found that my baking stone and my Lodge 6 qt. cast
iron pot just fit side by side on the oven rack, so as a controlled
experiment, I baked one loaf on the stone the way I usually do, and one
loaf in the cast iron pot, as per the NYT recipe.

Speaking of which, if you are going to get serious about baking bread
(and pizza!) you really need a stone, but you don't need to spend a lot
of money on one. Just go to your local building center, and get any
smooth surfaced stone or ceramic tiles, enough to cover most of one oven
rack with a few inches to spare around the outside to leave room for air
circulation. The thicker the tiles, the better. Then just leave them
there forever. Seriously, never take them out. The additional thermal
mass will help your oven maintain a constant temperature, especially if
you are the kind of guy who likes to open the door and peek a lot. You
might even want a second layer of tiles to put on the bottom of the
oven.

So anyway, I slashed a big X in the loaves with a serrated knife to
help let the steam out, baked them for about a half hour, at which point
I removed the lid from the pot. The loaf on the stone was nearly done,
but the one in the pot was pretty pale yet. I removed the loaf on the
stone about ten minutes later, but the other one took about another half
hour.

At this point, the whole house smelled heavenly, so the whole family
was clamoring to sample them. I cut off one slice from each loaf per
person, and the consensus was, well, um,... not much difference. I
would say that the loaf that started in the pot had a slightly crunchier
crust. It was also a little flatter, but that was because it was harder
(read: I was klutzier) to transfer the loaf into the pot, so it deflated
a little from handling.

Follow-up testing will be conducted the minute I get home from work
today.

Kevin

In article ,
says...
Speaking of which, if you are going to get serious about baking bread



....you also want a high-gluten bread flour. Generally speaking, the
farther north the wheat is grown, the higher the protein content (and
hence, the more gluten.) Since flour is heavy, the grocery store chains
try to get flour from the nearest possible source, so if you live in a
southern state then the all-purpose flour at your grocery store probably
isn't going to cut it. (And conversely, here in North Dakota, it's hard
to get a low-protein cake flour for making light fluffy pastry dough.)

So, when you come to ND to go pike fishing with me next spring, on the
way home stop and buy yourself a big sack of Dakota Maid bread flour,
ground from genuine high protein ND hard red spring wheat. Trust me,
you won't be sorry.

Kevin

Kevin Vang wrote:
says...
Anybody else try it yet ?

I did. Well, sort of, anyway. ...

The wife and I would say you Ann Landered the recipe.

Ann Landers published a recipe for something or other in her
column once and then received a *deluge* of mail all saying
basically the same thing, that is; I tried your recipe but I
didn't have any of this ingredient and that ingredient so I
put in some of this and a little bit of that and Ann, it was
TERRIBLE !

Ann Landers never published another recipe in her column.

--
Ken Fortenberry

"Kevin Vang" wrote in message
t...

...if you are going to get serious about baking bread
(and pizza!) you really need a stone, but you don't need to spend a lot
of money on one. Just go to your local building center, and get any
smooth surfaced stone or ceramic tiles, enough to cover most of one oven
rack with a few inches to spare around the outside to leave room for air
circulation. The thicker the tiles, the better. Then just leave them
there forever. Seriously, never take them out. The additional thermal
mass will help your oven maintain a constant temperature, especially if
you are the kind of guy who likes to open the door and peek a lot. You
might even want a second layer of tiles to put on the bottom of the
oven....

Ditto all that. However, for those who have never used a stone, there are a
couple of things to get used to. The temperature sensor in your oven
measures air temperature. Ceramics are not very good conductors. This,
combined with the thermal mass of the stone, means that it will take
considerably longer to come to temperature than the air inside the oven.
Preheat your oven as usual, but give it an extra 10 or 15 minutes for the
stone to heat up.

Baking directly on the stone requires a bit of experimentation. Results
will vary somewhat depending on the footprint size, thickness, and moisture
content of a loaf of bread or a pizza. There's no good alternative to trial
and error.....well, actually, there's none at all. Anything cooked or baked
in a container will also behave a bit differently if placed on the stone as
compared to on a rack.

Also, home ovens never heat evenly.....there are always relatively hot and
cool spots. The presence of the stone changes convection patterns inside
the oven, which means that the hot and cool spots will move. This won't
make a great deal of difference for most things.....especially those that
are cooked covered for a long time anyway.....but it can be critical for
some.

As with most things in cooking, none of this is terribly important if haute
cuisine means frozen pizzas and tater-tot casserole (both of which I'll eat
with gusto), but the difference between life-sustaining and awesome is in
attention to detail.

Wolfgang
and QUIT OPENING THE DAMN DOOR!

Ken Fortenberry wrote in news:gll8h.5172
:

Try it, you'll like it.

I can promise to consider it, and I'll let you know if I can pull the
trigger, but I'm not sure I can bring myself to do it. It's a little like
fishing downstream with a dry fly to a purist-- Not quite so dramatic as
fishing with the nymph, but somehow not quite right


--
Scott
Reverse name to reply

"Ken Fortenberry" ... The no-knead
method produces a bakery quality boule right out of your home
oven. No kidding.

http://wednesdaychef.typepad.com/the...heys_nokn.html

Try it, you'll like it.

--
Ken Fortenberry - True Believer

It's been bookmarked in my favorites and I will try it. My last few ventures
at breadmaking have been ...flat and heavy...doesn't seem to want to raise
2nd time around.
Guy