Jim Lahey/Mark Bittman Bread Club

(For related posts, please see the JLMBBC section.)

I'm sure you're all dying to know what I've been doing in the copious free time I've had since being laid off from the abattoir and wrecking my truck.  Answer: I've been baking bread.  A lot of bread.  Maybe a half-dozen loaves in the past week.  And it's good bread: boule-like objects that come out crusty-hot, with an audibly shattering crust that flies off when cut with a knife.  Do I have some fancy, steam-injected oven to get that crust?  Or perhaps I'm throwing ice cubes in a pre-heated cast iron skillet in the bottom of the oven? 

Nope.  I'm just dumping the dough in a big pot.  And I'm not kneading either.  In fact, I'm not going to much work per loaf at all.  And I'm not the only one making this good, low-work bread.  Boatloads of people across the country are cooking this bread, and busily tweaking the recipe to get the bread they want out of simple ingredients and equipment they probably already have. 

Can you do this?  Well, yes.  Is it hard?  No.  Do I have the stuff I need?  Probably.  Do you have flour, water, yeast, salt, a big bowl, and (this is key) a big pot with a lid that will go in the oven?  If you don't already have that big pot, I bet you can get one cheaply.  I saw something appropriate a few days ago in a discount grocery store for about $18, or you can use that monstrously expensive heavy Le Creuset dutch oven too.  Just make sure the handle won't melt in the oven. 

For those who want to get to the source, here's Bittman's original article at the NYT, the recipe he adapted from Jim Lahey's recipe, and a follow-up article with additional tips and tweaks.  Go read. 

Don't want to go read?  Ok, but before you start, be aware that the rise time for this bread is between 12 and 18 hours, so you're looking at an overnight project.  Don't be discouraged.  Just start cooking. 

Ready? 

1. Put 3 cups bread or all-purpose flour in a big bowl.  Add about 2 teaspoons salt and 1/4 tsp. (yes, that's only one-quarter teaspoon) of yeast.  Stir.  Add 1 5/8 cups of water.  Stir.  Cover with a towel or plastic wrap.  Set aside. 
2. Come back in 12-18 hours or so.  Do you have a good doubling or tripling of the volume of dough?  Good. Poke dough with finger, making indentation.  Does it stay indented?  Excellent.  Shape the somewhat wet dough into a ball in the bowl.  Re-cover. 
3. Come back in 15 minutes or so.  Reshape into ball.  Cover. 
4. Come back in 2 hours or so.  Put your coverable, oven-safe pot in the oven, and turn oven on to 450 degrees. 
5. Come back in 30 minutes or so.  (This part is tricky, so pay attention and don't do this while you're drunk or distracted or the like, or you'll burn the f$ck out of yourself.)  Very carefully, remove the pot from the oven and sit it on something oven-safe.  Put a pot-holder or the like on the pot handle, else you'll forget and burn yourself in about 2 seconds.  I'm not kidding.  Dump the ball of dough into the hot pot.  Carefully put the oven-safe lid on and put the pot back in the oven.
6. Take some butter out of the refrigerator if necessary for face-feeding when bread comes out.
7. Come back in 30 minutes.  Very carefully, using a pot-holder or the like, remove the scorching-hot lid from the pot.  A pair of tongs may work well here, depending on the lid.  Leave a pot-holder or something on the pot lid so you don't accidentally pick it up and burn yourself before it cools. Leave the pot itself in the oven.  Close oven. 
8. Come back in 15-30 minutes.  (I can't give you an exact time on this, because, among other things, it depends on the shape of the pot you're using.)  Is the loaf nice and brown?  Good.  Very carefully, and using a couple pot-holders or the like, remove the pot from the oven and dump the bread out on the rack.  Set the pot down on something oven-safe, and leave a pot-holder or something on the pot so you don't accidentally pick it up and burn yourself again.  The bread is hot also, but you probably knew that.  :)  Set it upright on the rack, uncovered, so it can cool while staying crusty.  If you cover it up, it takes longer to cool and doesn't stay crusty. 
9. This is where a true professional would tell you to let the loaf cool for an hour or so before cutting it.  If you agree and want the loaf to cool, by all means do so.  But if you're like me, you can wait about three seconds before you've taken the bread off the rack, whacked off a slice with a serrated knife, smeared as much butter as you possibly can on the slice, and shoved it in your pie-hole, because damn, it's good.  If you put the bread back on the rack after you've fed your face, it'll cool more nicely.  But again, you're probably like me, and you came back 2 or 3 more times for more hot bread, and one of those times you left it on the cutting board.  I promise I won't tell anyone. 
10. Make some more bread, tweaking the recipe to your own taste and predilections (the careful observer will see that this very recipe is tweaked from the instructions on the above-linked pages). 

There.  Wasn't that fun?  If you want tweaking guidelines, I'd suggest reading Bittman's second article above, entitled "No Kneading, but Some Fine-Tuning."  If I were a true professional, I'd give you my own guidelines for tweaking and the like.  But I'm gonna go eat some bread instead.  ;)

Comments

[Maura McLaughlin]

mmm....bread. After I take my brownies out of the oven, the bread is going in.

[Joe]

Well, fill us in, for God's sake: how the hell was it?

[John]

I have done three loaves of this bread and it is freakin' awesome. Print and save these articles. You will use them over and over. I saw the Times article when it first came out and started the dough the next day. It turned out great. I started my second loaf and then was hung over and didn't feel like baking it the 2nd day so it rose in the fridge for about 48 to 50 hours and it was amazing. A wonderful sourdough. The recipe needs a bit more salt, which is addressed in the follow-up article, and you can bake it in damn near anything.The water measure for me came out to about 13-14 ounces. I am not a baker by any stretch, but this loaf is really hard to screw up. Give it a try.

[John]

By the bye, as far as registering for the Times (as if!) is concerned, enter the login/password blowme/blowme and its all yours. And then go find out what bugmenot.com is. Enjoy.

[Maura]

It is hard to screw up. I was worried about the loaf I made yesterday because it rose much more slowly than the one I made earlier this week. But it came out beautifully. Be careful with how much corn meal you sprinkle on it though. It can get bitter if you use too much.
I suggest reading anything Bittman puts out. He's a food god. Well he's my food god.

[Claire]

No one has asked the key question, which is: Where's my damn loaf, Joe? Huh? Why haven't I been summoned to your kitchen? :) I have some righteous blackberry jam (homemade, of course) that I could bring!

[Joe]

John: I'm glad to hear from some ex-Fowler's folks. Have you been able to find a job yet? / I concur with your adjustments. I've also accidentally let loaves overrise; I just folded them down, re-rose them, and they baked up even better. / Thanks for letting me know about bugmenot.com. I hate those required logins. Used to, cypherpunks/cypherpunks worked, but no longer. / Would you be interested in attending an ersatz wake for Fowler's sometime soon? I think the general idea would be to get together someplace like the Joyce, get really intoxicated, and tell stories about the bad old days at Fowler's.

Maura: I tasted the loaf you mentioned with the extra cornmeal and I thought it was fine. I only tasted a little piece, so maybe some portions were scorched and some weren't. And thank you for referring me to these Bittman bread articles. I've been meaning to write up something about Bittman for a while now; maybe this will spur me on.

Claire: Bread distribution has been happenstance so far. I'm also trying to get loaves to new neighbors and folks nearby to whom I owe favors. I owe you favors too, but I can't get over to your place these days. But I'll get you some bread sometime. One of the things I'm working on right now is cooking multiple loaves at the same time. When I get that down, I'll be a regular bread factory, and the loaves will roll out of my house like Hot Wheels. :)

[John]

I would not be interested in attending any sort of wake for Fowler's because I don't believe we've seen the last of it. As soon as everything shakes out with that place I am going to have a few things to say about the whole situation. I hope to find a prominent forum for my comments so everyone will know exactly what went down and how we all feel about it.

[Joe]

John: Cool; thanks. BTW, registration information and the like for my site is not required; one can stick it in or not as one chooses.

[Pete]

There's a guy at www.breadtopia.com who's put up his own no-knead videos. Seems to be more into sourdough no-knead.

[Joe]

Pete: Thanks for the link. I wonder what the blooper reels look like. :)

[Paul Cook]

hello Bread Clubbers,

I have made three loaves of Lahey/Bittman bread with mixed results. First one was perfect. Second was OK and stuck to bottom of cast iron pan. Third I made yesterday and it was like I added crazy glue to mixture--bread was welded to bottom of pan. Bakers, please advise as to how to keep bread from sticking. Thanks

[Joe]

That's really funny: I've had very little problem with sticking. I've used All-Clad, Le Crueset, a Le Creuset knockoff, and even the top part of a 2-piece crock pot. So, no problem -- Until Yesterday (insert foreboding-sounding music here).

Yesterday I baked a loaf with fairly normal ingredients in a pan I've used before (the foot-boule pan). The pan was clean, but I remember rinsing it with tap water before putting it in the oven. I remember there being a minor amount of water clinging inside the pan when I put it in. The pan pre-heated for an abnormally long period of time because of a phone call. I could smell an unusual hot smell when I got off the phone; when I looked at the pan, it had some spots that looked like they came from the water. Since I was already running behind, I put the dough in anyway. The bread looked, smelled, and tasted absolutely great -- in that respect it might be the best loaf I ever made -- but it was just about welded in. The bulk of the bread finally came out in a piece separate from the crust (except on top). The funny thing is that I also recovered the crust more-or-less whole, and it was only stuck in a few places on the bottom. And those spots from the pre-heating were still there! The spots don't make any sense, as just water wouldn't do that. A day later, I still don't have those spots out.

So: (1) Maybe my pan wasn't scrupulously clean, and the spots were from whatever the water dissolved off the pan. (2) Maybe the water itself (or any dissolved minerals/chlorine/whatever) caused the problem. (3) I wouldn't think too much pre-heating would cause a problem, but maybe so. I'm pretty sure too little pre-heating would be a problem. BTW, I was pre-heating at 500 instead of 450, too. (4) My best release experience has been when I popped a fat lump of butter on top of the dough right after I poured it in: I guess the butter melted and ran down the sides to the bottom of the pan. The bottom crust was wild. Another one almost as good was the one in the crock pot top, as it has a non-stick coating.

That's about all I can think of right now -- anyone else have any ideas?

[megan]

I've made this bread tons of times. I don't use a put with a lid, I just put some foil over the top and it's fine. I've also never had a problem with sticking. I use corningware pans for it.

[Joe]

Megan: thanks. I would have thought foil wouldn't trap enough water vapor. Is it pretty crusty? My friend Maura uses something ceramic and she's totally happy with it.

BTW, I bought a couple more footboule pans earlier, and have been using them a lot, but accompanied by my shortening idea of putting a little around the edge after dumping in the dough. But then I had another sticking incident. Argh. At least it wasn't very bad.

[derrick dubois]

can i use this dough recipe to make it into cinnimon rolls?

[Joe]

Derrick - I probably wouldn't: it'd be way too wet and difficult to work with for rolls. It's also not sweet. You probably want to use a dough you can pat out flat and put cinnamon & sugar on, then roll up and cut into pieces. Most people would use a bread dough, but you could probably find a quick-bread recipe using baking powder or soda. Hell, you could prolly do it with Bisquick. :)

[SUE IN ATLANTA]

Hasn't anyone thought to use parchment paper in the bottom of the pan. It works like a charm.

[Joe Eater]

Sue - I'd rather use the butter I'm using currently. Haven't had any problems in a long time with butter. My friend Maura used parchment for a long time, but now I think she uses butter too.

[alex]

I have used a cast iron pan (50+ years old, so pretty well seasoned) and there was no problem with release. Kinda heavy to deal with, though, especially when heated to 500º.

[Joe Eater]

Alex - Yeah, handling burning-hot cast iron can be a PITA, but it sure does cook nicely. :)