Friday, October 10, 2008

Three day bread (No Knead)



Time is what makes bread taste good. The longer it takes the dough to rise the better the taste. This loaf takes three days to ferment this is achieved by using a a very very small pinch of yeast in the dough and letting it rise in the refrigerator for a long long time. Also using a baking stone makes for a crisp crust.

Recipe
5 cups (750gs) of strong bread flour (14% gluten)
2 cups (500 mls) water
pinch of yeast (use as little as possible)
1 tablespoon of salt

Method
Place all the ingredients into a large bowl, roughly mix and place into refrigerator covered with two layers of plastic wrap
Wait three days until the dough comes together and looks like kneaded dough
Take dough out of refrigerator for one hour
Punch down dough and shape into loaf, let rise until doubled in size about 1-2 hours
Preheat oven to 250C (480F) with baking stone in the oven
Bake of 20 mins
Reduce to 220C (430F) bake of 20-30 mins until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped


The bread worked out so goood! When I took the loaf out of the oven it started to 'sing' (the crust made loud cracking noises) as the French say this is a great sign of a thin crisp crust and the crumb was soft and chewy.

If you click on the first photo you will see a closeup of the crackes that formed on the loaf.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow three days? It reminds me of Reinhart's ancienne bread.

I still have no idea why hi-gluten is so hard to find around here.

Anonymous said...

I got the idea when I run out of yeast and had a tiny bit on the bottom of the tin. You could buy gluten-flour and add 2 teaspoons per cup of flour, this make plain flour almost the same as strong bread flour.

millie said...

This bread looks and sounds so wonderful! I'm going to try it out.