No Knead Bread, easy and fast.

[Gary350]

I was very skeptical when I learned about no knead bread, my grandmother and mother never made it like this and I never have either. It only takes 5 minutes to mix it up so it will be easy to find out how it turns out. Well I must admit this is some of the easiest and best bread I every made.

You can do this with ANY bread recipe by adding too much liquid.

LIQUID. Water will give you French bread or Italian bread. Milk and eggs will give you a total different softer bread. You can also add melted butter.

RECIPE, this is the first recipe I tried.
3 cups bread flour.
1 1/2 cups water.
2 tablespoons sugar.
1 1/2 teaspoon salt.
1 pack of double acting bread yeast or 3/4 teaspoon.

Put the water in a bowl, add the sugar, salt, yeast stir well. Add the flour 1 cup at a time, stir until it is mixed in each time before you add the next cup. Stir the batter it looks like there is too much water. Add the last cup and stir. After stirring about 15 or 20 strokes something amazing happens the liquid become think and harder to stir. STOP that is all the stirring it needs.

Oil coat the outer surface of the dough and keep it in a round bowl that will be easy to dump out later. Cover with a cloth and keep it warm about 90 to 100 degrees works best it will be ready to bake in 1 hour.

BAKING. This is a very cool trick. Put a cast iron Dutch oven in your kitchen oven about 20 minutes before the bread is ready to bake. If you have no Dutch oven use a deep cast iron skillet or 12" diameter cast iron skillet or a glass Pyrex bowl. When the bread dough has doubled in size bump it into the hot case iron pot, skillet or bowl. The HOT container bakes the crust. 350 degrees F gives you a nice golden brown thick crust, 375 will give you a darker thicker crust. 400 will give you a thick hard golden brown crust.

If you don't like hard crust bake the bread in a pizza pan or 2 bread pans. You can coat the dough surface with many different things to get different color crust. Dissolve 1 tablespoon sugar in 2 tablespoon of water coat the dough when it turn a very golden brown color when baked. Salt will do the same but less brown color. Honey gives a different color too. Real maple syrup and molasses gives you different colors and flavors.

BAKE the bread dough 400 degrees F for 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from oven. Butter the crust while it is hot to make a softer crust. Let the bread cool before you slice it.

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Next I tried my Grandmothers country bread recipe.

3 cups bread flour.
1/2 cup oatmeal ground into flour in the kitchen blender.
2 tablespoons corn meal.
1 1/2 cups milk add more milk if needed.
1 egg
2 tablespoons sugar.
1 1/2 teaspoon salt.
1 pack of double acting bread yeast or 1 teaspoon.

Dutch oven 375 degrees. Bake 400 degrees for 30 minutes. Butter the crust.

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Next I tried this bread recipe.

3 cups bread flour.
1 teaspoon baking soda.
1 1/2 cups water.
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar.
1 1/2 teaspoon salt.
Mix well then add 1 teaspoon vinegar.
1 pack of double acting bread yeast or 3/4 teaspoon.

12" cast iron skillet 400 degrees. Bake 400 degrees 25 minutes. Butter the crust.

400 degrees skillet makes the crust thick and crispy. The large diameter skillet makes a large diameter loaf of bread.

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I also tried my Grandmothers bread recipe cooking it on a pizza pan. Crust is soft and golden brown. The bread loaf is large diameter about 14" and not very tall about 4" in center.

Grandmother use to divide the dough in half 4 times to get 16 balls of dough then let them rise in a Pyrex cake pan to make 16 dinner rolls, WOW these are good.

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I experimented more I made a loaf of bread with chopped Spanish, Fresh Parsley and caraway seeds.

I made another load with zucchini it was good too.

This no kneed recipe is so easy I went crazy making bread and had lots of fun and good bread.

[imafan26]

This sounds like Basque bread. I got the recipe from Sunset magazine years ago and made it a couple of time. It was baked in a dutch oven and required no kneading. It was great. I lost the recipe over the years. Thanks for the recipes.

[applestar]

Thanks for these. I was looking for bread recipes after reading your post about the different kinds of stone ground flour

[Gary350]

Watch this video how to make no kneed bread. This guy is making French bread but any bread recipe works. I am experimenting with sour dough bread, oatmeal bread and artisan bread.

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread