Kneadlessly Simple: Fabulous, Fuss-Free, No-Knead Breads Read online

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Chapter 1: The Kneadlessly Simple Method: Nine Easy Steps to Great Bread

  Chapter 2: Getting Started: Basic Know-How, Ingredients, and Troubleshooting

  Chapter 3: Easiest Ever Yeast Breads

  Easy White Bread Loaves

  Crusty White Peasant-Style Pot Bread

  All-Purpose Light Wheat Bread

  Crusty Portuguese-American Yeasted Cornbread

  Easy Oat Bread

  Everyday Oatmeal Honey-Raisin Bread

  Great Granola Breakfast Bread

  English Muffin Loaves

  Crusty Seeded Pale Ale Pot Boule

  Easy Four-Grain Pot Boule

  Hearty Caraway Beer Bread

  Double Chocolate-Honey Bread

  Simple Enriched White Rolls

  Chapter 4: American Favorites

  County Fair White Bread

  Pull-Apart Butter-Top Rolls

  Cinnamon Pinwheel Raisin Bread

  San Francisco-Style Sourdough Bread

  Easy Cultured "Sourdough"Starter (with Commercial Yeast)

  Sonoma-Style Multigrain Crunch Bread

  Crusty Yeasted Cornbread with Coarse Salt

  Easy Buttermilk Pot Bread with Coarse Salt

  Cheddar and Chiles Bread

  Farmhouse Potato Bread with Dill and Chives

  Anadama Bread

  Cronshi's Challah

  Easy Cinnamon Sticky Buns

  Good and Easy Pecan Sticky Buns (or Saucy Maple-Butter Sticky Buns)

  Chapter 5: Old-World Classics

  Pain Ordinaire (Everyday French Baguettes or Batards)

  Fougasse (or Black Olive Fougasse)

  Brioche

  French Walnut Bread (Pain aux Noix)

  Yeasted Pain d'Epice

  Rosemary Focaccia with Coarse Salt

  Ciabatta

  Neapolitan-Style Pizza Dough

  Tomato Sauce and Mozzarella Pizza

  Herbed Cooked Tomato Pizza Sauce

  Crispy Roasted Garlic and Parmesan Pot Bread

  Rustic Cyprus-Style Herbed Olive Bread

  Swedish Limpa Bread (Swedish Rye Bread with Caraway and Anise Seeds)

  Scottish Oatmeal Bread

  Chapter 6: Healthful, Whole-Grain, Multigrain, and Gluten-Free Breads

  Crusty Seeded Cracked Wheat Pot Boule

  100 Percent Whole Wheat-Honey Bread

  Four Grain-Honey Bread

  Rustic Rye Pot Bread

  Raisin Pumpernickel

  Super Seeded Almond Butter Health Bread

  Crunchy-Munchy Pumpkin, Sunflower, and Flax Seed Boule

  Hearty Multigrain Boule with Molasses

  Brown and Wild Rice Crunch Bread

  Gluten-Free Light Sandwich Bread

  Gluten-Free Faux Rye Bread

  Chapter 7: Sweet Breads and Gift Breads

  Mardi Gras King's Cake

  Panettone

  All-Purpose Enriched Sweet Dough

  Simple Streusel Coffeecake

  Cornish Saffron Bread

  Spiced Cranberry Bundt-Style Coffeecake

  Holiday Cranberry-Apple Coffee Ring

  Apple-Cream Cheese Pinwheel Pastries

  Yeasted Banana Bundt-Style Coffee Ring

  Cherry and Chocolate Coffee Ring with Kirsch

  Chocolate—Chocolate Chip Bread Kit: Mix Recipe

  Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Bread Recipe (Using Mix)

  Going with the Grain Bread Kit Mix Recipe

  Going with the Grain Bread Recipe (Using Mix)

  Chapter 8: Toppings, Sauces, Glazes, Drizzles, and Finishing Touches

  Cornstarch Glaze

  Transparent Powdered Sugar Glaze

  Powdered Sugar-Lemon Drizzle

  Glossy Chocolate Drizzle

  Chocolate Ganache Glaze

  Caramel Sticky Bun Sauce

  Maple-Butter Sticky Bun Sauce

  Make-Ahead Streusel

  Chapter 9: Kneadlessly Simple Recipe Makeover Guide: How to Convert Traditional Yeast Recipes to the KS Method

  kneadlessly simple

  Fabulous, Fuss-Free, No-Knead Breads

  Nancy Baggett

  JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Copyright © 2009 by Nancy Baggett. All rights reserved.

  Photography copyright © 2009 by Alexandra Grablewski. All rights reserved.

  Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750–8400, fax (978) 646–8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748–6011, fax (201) 748–6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

  Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Baggett, Nancy, 1943-

  Kneadlessly simple: fabulous, fuss-free, no-knead breads / Nancy Baggett.

  p. cm.

  Includes index.

  ISBN 978–0–470–39986–6 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Bread. I. Title.

  TX769.B1745 2009

  641.8’15—dc22

  2008036192

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4

  Book design and typography by Ralph Fowler / rlfdesign

  Acknowledgments

  Many people played a part in making this book a reality. I'm grateful to every one of them.

  First, a big thank-you to Justin Schwartz, my editor, and the whole Wiley team, for enthusiastically supporting this project and working diligently to ensure that it moved along smoothly and efficiently. I also greatly appreciate the efforts of publicist Gypsy Lovett, book designer Ralph Fowler, and cover designer Jeff Faust. And I'm grateful to photographer Alexandra Grablewski and food stylist Brian Preston-Campbell, who created the enticing images for the book.

  Thanks also
to Judith Riven, my agent, for her enthusiasm, very professional representation, and wise counsel along the way.

  Many thanks to my recipe testers: My kitchen assistants Linda Kirschner and Judy Silver Weisberg helped test so many hundreds of recipes they probably dreamed about bread at night. Connie Hay also spent a number of days in my kitchen deep in dough! Home testers Sally Churgai, Erica Horting, and Dollene Targen provided valuable insights on what techniques and tips work best for the home baker and on how to make the recipes as clear and reliable as possible.

  Another thank-you goes to Joe Yonan and Bonnie Benwick of the Washington Post Food Section, and to the staff at Eating Well, whose keen interest in my work on accessible no-knead bread recipes helped spawn the idea for this book.

  Finally, thanks to the dozens of fine professionals whose expertise in all aspects of bread baking underpins the Kneadlessly Simple approach. It seems ironic that making things simple involved so much background research, but I needed to understand the chemistry and myriad practical applications of yeast baking to simplify and streamline without negatively affecting bread quality.

  I am particularly indebted to gifted baker and teacher Nick Malgieri for offering some valuable suggestions for improving my manuscript. Another thank-you goes to Dr. R. Carl Hoseney for helping me understand some of the complicated chemical processes that occur during yeast baking. Here, in alphabetical order, are the other experts whose observations, theories, methods, tips, treatises, experiments, and bits of wisdom have expanded my knowledge and influenced my thinking, recipes, and method. Some of these folks I know well, others a little, others only from their work: Rose Levy Berenbaum, Emily Buelher, Bernard Clayton, Raymond Cavel, Shirley Corriher, Elizabeth David, Rosada Didier, Carol Field, Maggie Gleser, Philippe Gosselin, George Greenstein, Jeffrey Hamelman, Jim Lahey, Daniel Leader, Joe Ortiz, Beatrice Ojakangas, Craig Ponsford, Peter Reinhart, Nancy Silverton, Monica Spiller, and Daniel Wing. Besides these individuals, I must thank the dedicated people behind two wonderful Web sites, thefreshloaf.com and theartisan.net, who provide a wealth of accurate, completely free information on a whole array of yeast baking topics.

  Introduction

  I've loved making homemade yeast bread since my mother first let me "help" prepare her cinnamon buns when I was five. I was lulled by the peaceful, calming nature of the process and amazed and proud of what wondrously good food—fresh, warm, irresistible bread—we could create from such ordinary kitchen supplies. Until I was a teenager, my mother was a stay-at-home mom, so she gave me the gift of many leisurely hours of baking by her side. My memories of those quiet times in our farmhouse kitchen are still vivid.

  Once I was grown and had my own home, I carried on my mother's baking traditions, loving the feeling of tranquility and connectedness with my past, and the extraordinary sensory experience and satisfaction of serving my family bread that came straight from our oven. Ironically, after I started writing food articles and cookbooks and honed my baking skills in professional pastry school, it was harder and harder to find the stretches of personal time my mother's old-fashioned yeast recipes required—even though I was usually working in my own kitchen! I realized that for people who spent most of their waking hours away from home, it was much more difficult to squeeze yeast baking into their lives.

  Convinced that those who couldn't enjoy baking their own bread were missing out, I began experimenting with the new fast-rising yeasts that were introduced to the market in the 1980s. These launched with the claim that they needed no proofing, and that breads could now be turned out in half the usual time. By accelerating the process with lots of yeast and fast, warm rises, I found that it was indeed possible to have homemade yeast bread on the table in less than two hours—I even created a book full of recipes to prove it! But, sad to say, the hurried rises yielded loaves that were more fluff than flavor, and the off-putting muss and fuss of bread baking still remained.

  For nearly two decades I set aside my yearning to make yeast baking more accessible to busy home cooks, spending most of the interim producing stories and recipes on other baking and sweets topics, as well as writing several well-received cookbooks on cookies, chocolate, and, most recently, American desserts. Like so many other people who have to snatch a few minutes here and there for bread baking, I gravitated more and more to quick breads. Yeast baking didn't seem to fit the increasingly hectic pace of life.

  Then, early in 2006, the editors at Eating Well asked me to create a yeast bread to go with a soup story. They wanted it easy as well as healthful, they said, because their readers were usually pressed for time. They, their readership, and I were all very pleased with my streamlined, no-knead recipe, although it was completely counter to a growing trend toward more complicated, multi-step artisan-style loaves.

  Since the late 1980s, a passionate group of professional artisan bakers and earnest hobbyists had been switching away from the typical American "direct method" formulas (mixing commercial yeast, water, and all the flour together and letting the dough rise) to long, slow rises and more complex and time-consuming sponge and sourdough techniques popular in Europe. (Actually, these methods were also widely used in America until the twentieth century: Nineteenth-century cookbook authors routinely directed their readers to "set a sponge," the day before they made bread. And so many prospectors during the California Gold Rush baked sourdough bread that they came to be called "sourdoughs" themselves.)

  As a result of the artisan movement, the quality of bread in this country was getting better and better. But it bothered me that the recipes being published almost invariably demanded multiple days and mixtures and effectively shut out all but the most dedicated home hobbyists from America's bread revolution.

  I began thinking about some of the techniques the artisan bakers had newly introduced or rediscovered these past decades, with an eye toward simplifications that would make them more accessible to the legions of busy and inexperienced home cooks. Baker Jim Lahey's clever no-knead, slow-rise French bread recipe in an October 2006 New York Times article by Mark Bittman definitely headed in that direction. It reminded me of a minimal-knead, refrigerator-rise technique that I (and others) had experimented with in the early 1980s, but Lahey's approach was better: It included a much longer countertop rise, which encouraged fuller gluten and flavor development. For his crusty bread he also revived—with fantastic results!—the old custom of baking in a covered Dutch oven, a technique commonplace when most Americans had to cook at a fireplace or campfire, but largely forgotten (except by die-hard campers) today.

  I wanted to see if all kinds of quality breads—from the currently popular crusty boules and focaccias to the soft, comfy home-style loaves of my childhood and everything in between—could be adapted to an even less demanding and more flexible no-knead, slow-rise approach. I also wanted to eliminate or minimize hand shaping. This often intimidates the inexperienced baker, plus it involves time, kitchen mess, and cleanup that discourage the busy cook. And I wanted to incorporate a recently developed yeast-retarding, cold-rise technique that arguably delivers the absolute best bread flavor. Finally, I aimed for a process so flexible that those who have to be away from the house for long periods can adjust the timing of all the usual yeast bread stages—mixing and first rise; second rise and shaping; and baking—to fit neatly into their own schedules.

  The results of my initial experimentation led to a story and recipes that appeared in the Washington Post in the fall of 2007. Almost immediately, readers blitzed the Post food section staff and me personally with enthusiastic feedback. The story generated lots of Internet buzz, too. Even more amazing than the sheer number of e-mails I received was the wide variety of people who wrote them: novices who had been afraid to try yeast bread before; veteran bakers who liked my easier, fuss-free approach; and time-pressed cooks excited that they could finally fit yeast baking into their schedules again. I even received several e-mails containing traditional recipes, with fervent requests for advice on how to convert the
m to my no-knead method. (These requests led to the last chapter in this book—Chapter 8, the Kneadlessly Simple Recipe Makeover Guide.)

  The enormous positive reaction proved not only the obvious—that people love, love, love good, fresh-from-the-oven yeast bread—but that when provided with a method that truly is simple and convenient, they are eager to join America's bread revolution. Which brings me to Kneadlessly Simple: Fabulous, Fuss-Free, No-Knead Breads. As the title indicates, the recipes require no kneading at all! Nor do I merely dodge kneading by manipulating the dough in a mixer or food processor: It actually kneads itself during a long, slow, cool rise.

  I'm excited to say that my Kneadlessly Simple recipes eliminate all the obstacles that used to deter folks from enjoying one of life's ultimate pleasures, breathtakingly fresh, wholesome home-baked bread. Anyone—absolutely anyone—can make all sorts of flavorful, fine-textured yeast breads easily, economically, conveniently, without fancy equipment, and, so long as the date on yeast packet indicates it's fresh, very reliably. If you can stir, measure, and read, you can make these breads! Best of all, unlike some of the baked goods produced using shortcut methods of the past, these will routinely have superior texture, aroma, and taste. In fact, unless you are lucky enough to have a world-class bakery right down the street, these may be the best breads you have ever eaten. (And they will certainly be more affordable.)

  A Word of Thanks to America's Artisan Bakers

  I owe a debt of gratitude to America's artisan bakers: They paved the way and contributed greatly to the knowledge base underpinning the Kneadlessly Simple method. Thanks to them, it's an exciting time to be eating—and making—bread in this country. From the late 1980s on, ground-breaking professional bakers like Craig Ponsford and other members of the Bread Bakers Guild of America have been dedicated to exploring and spreading the word on how to bake the best-tasting, best-quality, most interesting breads. These individuals have so raised the level of American baking that the United States now competes successfully in the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie, the world cup of baking: American teams overtook the previously dominant French to win gold medals in 1999 and 2005 and a silver medal in 2002.