No-knead White Bread

Finally tried the Jim Lahey’s recipe for no-knead bread, from his book My Bread. Was really happy that this bread fit right into my schedule (mix at 8am, shape at 10pm, bake at 11pm) and tastes fantastic! The crumb is soft and chewy, and it has a beautiful crust that crackles softly when cooling.

For this bread, the kneading or stretch and fold stage, which helps the gluten strands in the dough align to form a strong stretchable dough, is replaced by a long first rise and a higher hydration (75%), for the gluten strands to align on their own. The dough is left to rest for 12-18 hours at room temperature (I did around 14 hours for mine), with a smaller amount of yeast. So somewhat like a 100% biga bread, but with salt, which also slows down the fermentation.

Some notes on this bread: when left at room temperature, cover the bowl loosely to prevent the dough from drying out – mine had several spots of dried out dough :(. Since this dough is rather wet, scoring and tipping it out after the final proof is rather tricky. I recommend tipping the dough out onto the hot ovenproof container directly (I used to transfer it from my hands instead). Also, baking it seam side up gives lovely cracks in the bread without having to score it, which I found hard for this dough.

Another interesting note was that the recipe calls for 1/4 tsp instant yeast for 400g of bread flour, but for the 25% wholewheat version, much more yeast was added (1/2 tsp). This is probably since the wholewheat needs more rising power, and also maybe over-fermentation is not an issue with the larger amount of salt. I was worried about this since wholewheat dough ferments faster in general.