Daily Bread II: No-knead Semi-Sourdough Bread

For many years my parents made their own bread, stopping only when Mennonites started selling excellent home-made bread at the local farmer's market. Nowadays, my mother lives alone and doesn't drive, so it's not as easy to get to the market, so she really enjoyed my homemade bread when she was here for a visit.

She started musing about making bread herself again, but this is a challenge because she doesn't have a mixer with a dough hook and arthritis makes kneading bread by hand painful. I suggested a no-knead bread recipe I had come across on the Internet. However, I hadn't made it myself so I couldn't give advice on how well it worked. So this one's for you, Mom!



I followed the instructions in the Essential New York Times Cookbook, by Amanda Hessler (although I did substitute whole wheat flour for one cup of white flour).  The result was a crusty, sourdough-style bread with a coarse spongy structure and excellent flavour.

It uses very little yeast and relies on a long rising time to replace the kneading, which puts it half way to a sourdough bread. Like sourdough, the dough is very soft. In fact, using the proportions given in the recipe, I think the dough was too soft, almost a batter.

It does not contain oil or milk, so it's keeping qualities are not that great, but it's great as an accompaniment to soup, or made into croutons.

You don't have to knead the dough, but you do need to handle it. Because my dough was half way to a batter, I found a dough scraper very useful. The instructions call for using just enough flour to keep the dough from sticking, but the only way to do that is to flour the work surface, your hands, and the dough scraper very generously.

The recipe calls for you shape the dough into a ball with a seam for the second rise. This was not possible with my dough, so more flour or less liquid may be required. I should have looked at the  video  first, which  shows the consistency you really want.

For the second rise, the dough is placed on a floured tea towel. With such a soft dough, I decided to  put the dough in the tea towel into a bowl to prevent it from spreading sideways instead of upwards. This also made it easier to tip into the preheated pot for baking.

No-Knead Semi-Sourdough Bread

Adapted from the recipe created by Jim Lahey and made famous by Mark Bittman.

2 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (300 ml) water

1. The day before you want to bake the bread, mix the dry ingredients in a bowl, then add the water. Mix together until it forms a clump, then cover with a plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 12-18 hours. The dough will form bubbles as the flour, encouraged by the yeast, ferments.
2. Flour a working surface and tip the dough onto it. It will be soft, tacky, and shaggy. Sprinkle more flour over the dough and fold it over itself a few times. If the dough is very soft, use a dough scraper. Let it rest for 15 minutes.
   
3. Meanwhile, cover a tea towel with flour, bran, or cornmeal. After the dough has rested, gently shape it into a ball (if you can), then transfer it to the tea towel, seam side up. Let it rise for 2 to 2.5 hours.
   
4. A half hour before the second rise completes, pre-heat the oven to 475, with a heavy covered pot or Pyrex casserole. (The preheating and cover of the pot are important! They will essentially form a mini-oven in which steam is released to form the crust.)
   Note: I used my cast iron cocotte, but it was a bit too big. Next time I'll try a smaller pot or a Corningware casserole dish so that loaf doesn't end up so flat.
   
   
5. Take the preheated pot out of the oven and uncover the dough. Gently tip the dough into the pot, cover it, and put it into the oven. Bake covered for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and bake uncovered for 15-30 minutes more until the top is a deep brown. (I think I could have left my bread in a bit longer; it was golden brown on top, but a bit underdone.)
6. Let the bread cool before slicing.

Our Daily Bread

There was a time in my life, when I was very young, that I regularly made bread. Mom had an old 50's booklet from Fleischman Yeast called "When you bake with yeast" from which I learned the basics. But I was inspired to do more by a couple of visiting Quakers who used bread making as a focus activity for some kind of spiritual discussion. I no longer remember the discussions or context, but it was from Helen Stevenson that I learned about the sponge method and how flexible and forgiving bread dough can be. So in my student days, I often made Helen's bread.

The years passed, and I stopped baking bread, but I recently started again in response to a crie de coeur from my aunt. She was complaining about the disappointing quality of a regular loaf of bread (yes, even in Europe!). She doesn't have a bakery close by, so she buys it in the supermarket and although it's better than much North American bread, it is still pretty soft and squishy, and lacking in depth of flavour. And of course, there are specialty breads and some really good bakeries, but for your regular sandwich bread that needs to stay relatively fresh and tasty for several days, there is still nothing like a home-made loaf.

So I started baking bread again.
I vary the types of flour quite a bit, depending on what I have on hand, but the following recipe is becoming a reliable standard. It yields a springy sandwich bread with a medium crumb that keeps well for 3-5 days outside of the fridge. The rolled oats temper the whole wheat flavour, yielding a mellow loaf with a hint of sweetness that goes well with everything from aged Gouda cheese to cream cheese and strawberries.

All my old recipes call for using warm water, scalding and cooling the milk, and letting the dough rise in a warm place. This will reduce the time it takes the dough to rise, but it also reduces the time for flavour to develop so I just use room temperature water and milk out of the fridge. Except for the last rise, I actually pay little attention to whether I've let the dough rise for an hour, or twice that time. Rising time is very flexible and you can do other stuff or run errands in the mean time. If you think you'll be out for a long time, put the dough in the fridge to slow down the rising time.

Barbara's Sandwich Bread

Yield: 2 loaves
I use a mixer with dough hook to do most of the kneading, but if you don't have this, you can knead the dough by hand. It's what I used to do.

Sponge:

375 ml	1.5 cup	water
	2 tablespoons	brown sugar
7 grams	2.5 teaspoons	yeast (active dry yeast or instant yeast)
60 grams	.5 cup	all-purpose flour
70 grams	.5 cup	whole wheat flour
90 grams	1 cup	rolled oats *

Dough:

250 ml	1 cup	milk
45 ml	3 tablespoons	oil
	2 tablespoons	brown sugar
	1 tablespoon	salt
120 grams	1 cup	all-purpose flour
435 grams	3 cups	whole wheat flour

* I use quick rolled oats, which are cut, rather than old-fashioned rolled oats, which have larger flakes.
** Or substitute one or more other flours for some of the whole wheat flour. I've used spelt, rye, barley, and buckwheat in one or more combinations, and the result has always been good.

1. If you are using active dry yeast, combine the water and sugar in the bowl of a mixer. Sprinkle the yeast over the water and let stand for 10 minutes until the yeast foams up. (If this doesn't happen, the yeast is old and inactive and you will have to get some new yeast and start again.) Add the flour and rolled oats.
   
   If you are using instant yeast, just mix all the sponge ingredients together.
2. Beat the sponge ingredients together until smooth. I use the paddle of the mixer for about 2 minutes, but a wooden spoon is also fine. You just need to do it for a bit longer.
3. Cover the bowl with a tea towel and let stand for about an hour until the batter has at least doubled in bulk and has large bubbles on top.
4. Stir in the milk, oil, sugar, and salt.
5. Add the 4 cups of flour, and knead the dough for 6-10 minutes using the dough hook. I tend to knead it for 6 minutes with the machine and then knead it by hand for a few minutes to make sure it has the right texture and feel.
   
   To knead by hand, tip the dough onto an oiled surface and flour your hands. Stretch the dough, away from you, then fold it over toward you, and push it away with the heal of your hand. Turn the dough by a quarter and repeat. Gradually the dough will get stretchy and supple, until it has a relatively smooth but slightly tacky feel. It should spring back when you push a finger into it and should not stick and leave pieces of dough on the counter when you lift it up.
6. Form the dough into a ball, return it to the bowl and cover with a tea towel. Let stand for at least an hour or until doubled in bulk. While the dough rises, grease two loaf pans.
7. Punch the dough down and turn it out onto the counter. Divide it into two. Form each half into a rectangle that is approximately the length of your loaf pan. Fold the top edge into the middle, and then the bottom edge into the middle like a letter. Then turn each end over. Shape the loaf so that it will fit the baking tin and place it into the tin. (I usually divide the dough into 4 pieces, and form each quarter into a ball, then place two balls into each tin, but this is cosmetic; I just do it because it makes it easy to cut the baked bread in half  so that I can freeze it.)
8. Cover the loaves loosely with a tea towel and let rise for at least a half hour until the dough domes above the tin by a small amount (about 1 cm). While the loaves rise, preheat the oven to 350F/190C.
9. Bake the bread for 35 to 40 minutes. It should come out of the tin quite easily, and sound hollow when you tap the bottom. If it doesn't, bake it for a bit longer.

Waldkorn Crispbread

When I was in Denmark recently with my sister and brother-in-law we stayed at a wonderful B&B (Dalsgaard B&B) on a small farm 20 minutes from Århus. The accommodation was in a separate building, with separate living room (including fireplace), and two bedrooms. There was no kitchenette or WiFi  but these inconveniences were completely compensated by the fabulous breakfasts featuring homemade bread rolls and preserves, lovely cheeses and sliced meats, and what our hostess Karin called Swedish crispbread (also homemade). These were seed-filled, nutty, crunchy and utterly satisfying.

She very generously gave me the recipe, and I made it almost as soon as we got home to Amsterdam.

I was surprised by the amount of oil the recipe called for, and because I don't have a forced air oven, I had to bake them much longer than Karin's recipe called for. Even then, toasting the crispbreads  afterwards is what gave them their lovely golden brown color. They have kept for a month (while I went on another holiday!) and they still taste great. I often eat one for breakfast with some cheese or accompanying some soup for lunch.

When I made another batch, I decided to make some adaptations—cutting the oil by half and increasing the water, raising the oven temperature. Even at the higher temperature, I baked them for double the amount of time (40 minutes) and eventually lost patience and once again toasted the crispbreads to get them golden brown. And they still taste great!

Waldkorn Crispbreads 

Adapted from Karin Dalsgaard
Yield: 24 flatbreads, aprox. 9cm square
Note: This recipe has been adjusted from my original post, so it now produces the correct results--delicious, brown crispbreads!

American	Metric	Ingredient
1.75 cup	245 grams	whole wheat flour
.5 cup	55 grams	quick rolled oats
.5 cup	75 grams	flax seed
.5 cup	70 grams	sesame seeds
.5 cup	65 grams	sunflower seeds
.5 cup	65 grams	pumpkin seeds
1 teaspoon	5 ml	baking powder
.5 cup	120 ml	oil
1 cup	250 ml	water

1. Preheat the oven to 190C/375F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats.
2. Mix all the dry ingredients and then mix in the oil and water. The mixture should be quite soft a spreadable, so add a bit more water if it seems too dry (although I've not found this necessary). 
3. Spread half the dough on a lined baking sheet, cover it with another piece of parchment paper and roll it out to the edges. Repeat for the second sheet.
4. Remove the top parchment paper (it just makes rolling out easier) and cut the dough into squares so the crispbreads  will break neatly when baked. 
5. Bake for 30-40 minutes until the crispbreads are brown and barely yield to pressure when pressed. Karin suggests that if the outer crispbreads are done and the inner ones are not, you can remove the outer ones before returning the rest to the oven. 
6. If they are not golden brown, toast each piece in a toaster. 
7. Store in a tin for up to a month.

Note: Karin's recipe calls for baking them at 180C for 20 minutes in a forced air oven. Since ovens can vary a lot, consider this as your starting point and experiment with the temperature and length of time that works for you. I'll do the same, and when I find the ideal combination, I'll update this post.

English Muffins

When I first moved to Holland there was a Marks and Spencers store in the Kalverstraat. I always found their clothes boring but they had a pretty good food section, and that was where I bought my English muffins. English muffins are unknown in Holland (except for the Egg McMuffin, perhaps), so when Marks and Sparks closed, I was bereft of one of my favourite breakfast foods.

Since then, I've had to rely on visits home to Canada for my EM fixes, and I've occasionally tried making them myself, with various recipes. Most of these seemed too bread-like and never achieved the chewy, porous texture of the commercial muffins I was used to. But I've found English Muffin valhalla with the following recipe. Using a yeast batter (not dough) and rings to keep the muffins in shape on the griddle, this is it!


English Muffins
I adapted this recipe from Alton Brown by using milk instead of hot water and milk powder, and swapping in 1 cup of whole wheat flour. Yields 8-10 muffins, depending on how much you fill the rings.

Equipment: 3-inch muffin rings, griddle or large heavy frying pan

1 cup milk
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup lukewarm water
1/4 teaspoon sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons dry yeast
1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup corn meal

1. Scald the milk, then pour into a large bowl with the butter, sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Stand and let cool to lukewarm.
2. In a small bowl, mix the water, 1/4 teaspoon sugar, and the yeast and let stand until the yeast bubbles.
3. Pour the yeast mixture into the cooled milk mixture.
4. Add the flour and beat the batter for about 5 minutes. (I did this by hand because the original recipe called for this, but next time I'll try it with the mixer.)
5. Cover the bowl with a tea towel and let stand for 30 minutes, until the batter begins to form bubbles.
6. Add the remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt and beat into the batter.
7. Heat a griddle or heavy frying pan. The original recipe suggested an electric frying pan set to 300F. I heated my cast iron frying pan on medium high and then turned it down to low for cooking the muffins. Because I was using the largest burner, I even used a flame spreader.
8. Generously sprinkle the griddle with corn meal (or lightly oil the griddle), oil the insides of the muffin rings, and place the rings on the griddle.
   
9. Using a small ladle, put the batter into the rings so that it about half fills the rings (it can come just over the half way point). (The rings in the picture are a bit over-filled.) The number of rings and the size of the griddle determine how many muffins you can cook at one time. I only had 2 rings, so it took a while. If you lightly oil the griddle (for example using an oil spritzer), the muffins are easier to turn but may burn more easily. Corn meal prevents the muffins from burning but tends to stick to the rings and makes it slightly harder to free them from the rings. 
10. Cover with a large pot lid and let it bake cook for 4-6 minutes. The batter will rise to fill the ring completely.
11. Turn the muffins over, cover, and cook for another 4-6 minutes.
12. Remove the muffins from the rings and let cool, while you re-oil the rings and cook another batch of muffins, until the batter is gone.

To serve, prick the sides of the muffin all around with a fork, separate the halves, toast them, then put your favourite sweet or savory topping on them. I favour butter and honey, or sliced cheese and ginger marmelade. They are also great as tosties with tomato and cheese.

Oatmeal Bread

I can sometimes get very discouraged about bread in Holland. There are a couple of good bakers in Amsterdam, such as Hartog and Vlaamsche Broodhuis, but most bread in supermarkets and even ordinary bakers is soft and squishy, no matter what the colour, grain, or the number of seeds in it.

So today I decided to make my own bread again. I dug into one of my new cookbooks and came up with Oatmeal Sandwich Bread. This recipe produces a very soft, sticky dough so it is not well suited to hand kneading. Instead, I put the apple-green machine to work.

The recipe calls for the mixed ingredients, except the salt, to rest for half an hour to autolyse. It lets the flour absorb more moisture and produce a moister loaf. It certainly seems to work, producing a large, flavourful loaf with a good crumb. It slices easily and does indeed work well for sandwiches.

The loaf is very large, rising well over the pan. I think I might split the dough into two smaller pans next time.

Oatmeal Sandwich Bread
Adapted from Good to the Grain

2 teaspoons active dry yeast
2 cups lukewarm water
3 tablespoons molasses (I used Zeeuwse stroop, which is as near as I can get here)
2 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
2 cups all-purpose four
1 cup rolled oats (I had a mixture of fine and large rolled oats)
2 ounces butter, melted
1 teaspoon salt

1. Combine the warm water and molasses in the bowl of an electric mixer. Stir until most of the molasses is dissolved, then mix in the yeast. Let sit to proof the yeast for about 5 minutes, until the yeast has bloomed.
2. Add the melted butter, flour, and oats (but not the salt) to the yeast mixture and stir together with a wooden spoon. Let rest for half an hour.
3. Add the salt and using the dough hook, mix the dough for 6 minutes on medium. The dough is moist and will slap around the sides without sticking too much. If it does stick, add a tablespoon of flour until the dought comes away from the sides. at the end, to quote: "The dough should be s0ft and supple, slightly tacky,with a beautiful sheeting effect."
4. Butter a bread loaf pan.
5. Scrape the dough onto a floured surface and knead it a few times. Butter a large bowl (I just did a cursary rinse and oil of the mixing bowl), cover, and let rise in a warm place for an hour, until doubled in size.
6. Turn the dough onto a floured surface, shaping it into an oblong form about the size of the loaf pan,  squeezing out the air. Shape it into a loaf by folding it over and pinching the edges together to form a seam. Fold under the ends, roll it around a bit, then put it into the buttered pan with seam side down. Let rise for another hour. During that time, preheat the oven to 400 F. 
7. Bake for 40 minutes until the top is dark and it sounds hollow when thumped. (I baked it for closer to 50 minutes, and even then it did not turn as dark brown as the picture in the cookbook).

Sun-dried Tomato Focaccia

My newly acquired cookbook, Good to the Grain is providing lots of fodder for kitchen experiments.  One of my faults in cooking is that I rarely follow a recipe exactly, even the first time I try it, and the focaccia made with spelt flour was no different. I followed the flour proportions, but since I had a couple of old dried sun-dried tomatoes lying about that I wanted to use, I incorporated them into the bread as well, and I used the soaking water in the starter.

I am noticing with a number of recipes in this cookbook that the amount of salt required is too high, at least for my kind of salt and my taste. The author, Kim Boyce, always specifies kosher salt, which is really just coarse salt. The brand she uses is Diamond Crystal, which is less salty than Morton's. Since neither of these brands is available in Amsterdam, I just use coarse sea salt. Either this salt is much saltier than her brand, or my taste buds are accustomed to much less salt. Either way, I am now halving all her recommendations for salt, and that is yielding much better results.

Rather than baking one large bread, I divided the dough into 3 after the first rise, reserving 2/3 of the dough in the fridge for future baking.

Sun-Dried Tomato Focaccia

Yield: 3 9-inch round loaves
Source: adapted from Good to the Grain, by Kim Boyce

This produces a flavourful bread with a nice bottom crust. I think the left-over would make excellet bread for panzanella.

Ingredients

2 sun-dried tomatoes
1/4 boiling water

2 teaspoons yeast
pinch of sugar
1 cup warm water

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 1/2 cups spelt flour
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teasoon salt

2-4 tablespoons olive oil for greasing the pan

Method

1. Soak the tomatoes in boiling water for half an hour until soft and the water cooled down to lukewarm.
2. Reserve the soaking water and chop the softened tomatoes into small pieces, about the size of currents.
3. In a large bowl, mix the yeast, sugar, warm water, and reserved tomato water. Let stand 5 minutes until the yeast begins to bloom.
4. Stir in the olive oil, salt, and flours. Beat vigorously and then turn out onto a floured surface. The dough will be quite soft.
5. Knead for about 10 minutes, adding up to 1/2 cup of flour to keep the dough from sticking.
6. Grease the mixing bowl with some olive oil, turn the dough into it and turn it so the whole ball gets covered with oil. Cover with a tea towel and set aside in a warm spot to rise until doubled (about 2 hours).
7. Generously grease 3 9-inch cake tins with olive oil. 
8. Punch down the dough and gently fold in the chopped soaked tomatoes. Divide the dough into 3 pieces. Using your finger, spread the dough into the cake tins to form round flat loaves. Dimple them with your finger. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside to rise for another hour.
9. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and bake the breads for 22-25 minutes. Let the bread cool slightly before serving.