Food Lab Basic: POV No Knead Bread

hey everyone its Kenji I’m at home it’s8:45 on a Saturday night which meansthat it’s a perfect time to start makingdough for no need bread now no needbread it’s like the easiest it’s theeasiest way I know to make bread youstart here we go we’re gonna get someflour so first of all first thing youwant to do is get a scale actually letme show you why you want to get a scalescales make baking so so much easierthe reason I want to get a scale is heright so if you try and do things byvolume look up a measuring cup doesn’tmatter its size so the big problem youend up with is this look so if I scoopedout flour and a measuring cup and say Ilevel it offso 2/3 of a cup of flour there that is57 grams now say I’d do it again but Idon’t push quite as hard when I level itlet’s hear this often let’s see what weget now now we got 52 grams and nowlet’s say we do it this way where somepeople do where you take a spoon youspoon it into the cup level it let medump it innow we’ve got 48 grams so that’s 48grams to 57 grams it’s a pretty widerange and that can be an issue whenyou’re baking where you want everythingto be kind of well what we do is we workin things called bakers percentages andbakers percentages are just a way ofnormalizing a recipe to the amount offlour that you use so it allows you toscale a recipe so for instance so whenyou’re making a bread recipe you’dalways consider the amount of flour youhave to be 100% okay and then everythingelse is based on that so this dough forinstance is 75 75 percent hydrationmeans 75 percent water two percent saltor two and a half percent salt and aboutquarter to half a percent yeast so thatmeans that no matter how much flour Istart with it’s very easy to calculatehow much of the other ingredients I needto make the dough correctly every timeso for this particular recipe I’m goingto start with 400 grams of flourwhen I was at Cook’s Illustrated weactually did a test on measuring flourweighing it out and we found that therewas a difference it ranged from a cup offlour ranged from four ounces to sixounces depending on who was packing itand how they were packing it so that’slike a difference of I mean 400 to 600that’s a difference of 50 percent whichis a huge difference I’m actually gonnaswitch over to this other bowl which Iprefer sorry get the bigger bowl first Ilove this scale by the way this is an oxOh scale pull out pull out a face whichmeans that you can put your dough on ityou can put your bowl on it and youdon’t have to like kind of duckunderneath to see all right so we have400 grams of flour in there I’m gonnaget a quarter of a percent of yeastmaybe let me get a half percent sothat’s 2 grams this is instant yeast bythe way and honestly you don’t have tobe super precise with your yeast at allit almost um self regulates itself as itstarts to rise overnight we’ll talkabout that talk about it in a little bitmm-hmm and now I’m going to do two and ahalf percent of salt so that’s what doesthat six grams of salt no all right 6grams of salt I drew that right two anda half percent of 400 is six right yesyeah a little bit more if that’s allright two and a half to three percentoh no that’s literally less whatevertold you I love this skill right allright here we goand then we mix it all upno need Brett no need bread by the wayhas been around a real long time but itbecame really popular I think in like2007 ishit was while I was that Cook’sIllustrated so I think it was 2007 say2006 when Mark Bittman broke down JimLahey Baker in New York wrote down JimLahey he’s method for it in the New YorkTimes and then like everybody was doingeither remember like coming into theTest Kitchen one day and tasting thisbread that someone I baked and it waslike incredibly good and it come fromthe New York Times and well the ideabehind Nonis bread oh I’m gonna add somebeer you don’t have time just drinkingit I’m gonna put replace some of mywater with beer we’re going with 300grams of water or 300 ends of liquid solet’s say let’s do like 50 grams of beerish a little more I’ll get this up to300 with the water so the idea behind itis that normally the reason you needdough is that when you add water toflour the proteins in the flour glutenand gliadin a little too much wateragain that’s all right very forgivingrecipe they form gluten gluten is aprotein Network that is what keeps breadits structure so like a really nicechewy bag yet or a nice chewy sourdoughthat texture comes from the formation ofgluten now normally what you would do isyou would need bread and kneading breadwhat that does is that it causes the theproteins to interlink and form thatnetwork that sort of net of protein thatthen as the bed as the as the yeastproduces carbon dioxide it kind of puffsup the little air pockets inside thereand then as you bake it those puffs upeven more from the heat you know fromthe expansion of the gases and that’swhat makes bread have that kind of lighttexturethe bubbles inside so normally you wouldneed bread to get to form gluten themthe way no need bread works is thatthere’s a high enough amount of water inthere that the molecules kind of movearound a little bit more freely thanthey wouldn’t have in a sort of lowhydration bread and as you let it sit atroom temperature overnight 12 to 18hours or so the action of the yeast theyproducing those bubbles and thosebubbles kind of pushing up through thedough those actually do all of thekneading work for you aligning all themolecules that you don’t really have todo any kneading at all all you got to dois do this mix it up you saw how littleI mixed it up you just want to make surethat there’s no dry flour remaining inthere you can cover with plastic I’mgonna cover it with a second Bowl thatgoes upside down like this and thenwe’re just gonna let it sit there nowfor oh I don’t know about 12 hours 12hours 12 hours 20 minutes or so umthat’s how long it’s been and you seethis is breakfast and we’re about to sitdown eat breakfast don’t give me quicklygive this bread to a few torrent turnsso this is what the dough is gonna looklike the next day so you can see it’skind of risen it’s nice and bubbly veryvery soft what I’m gonna do now this isa sort of optional step but I like to doit clean hands I just wash my hands whatyou want to do is give it like a fewturns and when you’re working with itwet dode this what you got to kind of bevery gentle and touch it very looselyyou don’t want to let your hand let itrest on your hands or it’ll stick so I’mdoing is I’m giving it a few turnswhich means I’m taking one side of thedough and then pulling it over the topand then kind of folding and folding itover itself like that you can do thislike a couple times and the idea here isthat you’re re you’re kind ofhomogenizing it a little bit so thatyeast that has been abandoned in pocketswith no food left is sort of gettingreintroduced to more food sources sothat I can ferment a little bit longerand rise a little bit more and that’s itand I’m gonna cover it up again and I’llcome back to it in about an hour or soyou can wait up to two hours you canwait even longer if you want if youreally want to develop flavor in herewhat you can actually do is transferthis to alike a ziploc bag or some kind ofrefrigerator friendly container tightcontainer so I’m I dropped a flexi thenthere had that good thereso I’m got a refrigerator friendlyairtight container and let it sit in thefridge too cold ferment for three tofive days and that will really help itdevelop some more nice flavor but todaywe’re just gonna do a same-day loaf so Igot a sheet of parchment paper here andin the oven here I’ve got this is one ofthe real keys in fact this is the realtrick in this recipe is using a Dutchoven to break to bake the bread and I’lltell you a little bit more bit moreabout that later but I’ve got this Dutchoven in an oven preheated to 450 degreesI’ll talk about the signs of that oncewe get the dough in there and you cansee this one I is a lectures a but I’vereplaced the normal it comes with aplastic polypropylene handle this oneI’ve replaced with the stainless steelone that you can buy online and thatmakes it I’ve improved past I think Ithink the other one starts to off gas atlike 425 degrees or something like thatso this one will let you take it up to400 degrees no problem which is what youwant for your bread all right got alittle bit of flour does my board uplike thislook gentle dusting on the top and againyou want to work pretty quick with wetthose like this so don’t let it like siton your hand for too long all right sowe got our dough I’m gonna take it andI’m just gonna fold this over like thatfold that over like that just Jarettvery gently tuck it together make alittle seam and that’s just to kind ofshape the outside of it and I’m flippingit right back over and there we gothat’s basically it that’s gonna be ourloaf of bread you can see how nice andsoft and well it’s a high hydrationdough so it again you can see I’m movingmy hands like this you don’t want toreally if I tried to pick this up itwould stick to my fingers if I tried topick it up and hold it and I thinkthat’s one thing that a lot of you knowat least I had a lot of trouble withwhen I was first learning how to bakeand first learning how to handle dough’sI always thought they would they shouldbe much drier than they were and easy tolike need and easy to put into shape andmove aroundI guess because I’d been used to workingwith play-doh but a high hydration billlike this it is going to have like avery sticky texture and it’s not you’renot going to want to handle it very muchI put a little bit more flour on thisparchment here now I’m going to pickthis up and transfer it there againquick seam side down okay give it alittle tuck underneath make sure itlooks nice and prettyand I’m gonna take this dish towel I’mgoing to flour it clean dish towelum you know doesn’t have to be brand newbut recently washed okay I’m just gonnaput this right over the top here andthat’s gonna allow the bread to rise onelast time without drying out andhopefully the flour will make sure thatit doesn’t stick to the dish toilet allright so that’s the last rise it’s gonnatake and the next step is going to bebaking by the time you’re doing this youdo want to have your oven preheating letyour oven preheat for at least an hourbecause you want to make sure that thatDutch oven is all the way up to the sametemperature as the ambient airtemperature in the oven so you want thesurface of all the Dutch oven and allthe air inside the Dutch oven to be at450 degrees as well all right so I willbe back in an hour or so all rightall right it’s actually now been aboutthree hours um even I think I was onlyplanning to go for one but you know justdokin go for its last rise for anywherebetween like 1 to 4 hours or so and Ireal and I realized that this recipe sofar it’s like I’ve messed up the amountof flour the amount of water in it andI’ve messed up the amount of rising andit seems like I just consistently say ohyou can do whatever you want and it’sstill gonna come up fine but that’sbecause it’s like basically true you cando you can screw this up in many waysand still have the bread come outtotally fine I’m just giving it a fewlittle slashes here that’s going toallow to puff out a little bit I’m gonnadust it with a tiny bit of cornmeal youdon’t have toyou could dust it with flour if you wantwe’rematter you could do cracked wheat cornmeal you can do nuts and seeds if youwantso breads here I’m gonna make a littlelanding spot for my real real hot Dutchoven actually let’s do it with the flourside in little longing landing spot forthe Dutch oven so this oven has beenpreheating has been preheated within theoven to 450 degrees now good coming offI do this on parchment paperspecifically because it makes it easy tothen let’s get rid of this excess flourto then pick it up and plop it right injust like that okay and then hmm the lidgoes back on and this goes right back into that 450 degree oven for about 20 to30 minutes hopefully that weird there’sgonna be a weird cut in this videobecause I I don’t have a productionassistant and so I would missmiscalculated the angle of my cameraanyhowso the point is that what happened thereason why you put that lid on there isthat so in a good bakeries oven like ifyou go to like a sourdough Bakery abakery that a real traditional bakerythe the oven will have a lot of moisturein it and that’s what helps give thebread I think called oven spring so whatit does is it keeps the exterior of thebread bread soft a little bit longer allthat extra moisture and so that when itgoes in the oven a lot of the thebubbles the gas bubbles that the carbonand the carbon dioxide that the yeasthas been producing they’ll expand veryrapidly and that’s what gives like ahigh hydration bread those nice bigbubbles inside that nice crumb structureso it also keeps the exterior it makesthis sort of thicker layer ofgelatinized starch on the exterior andas the bread break bread bakes that’swhat gives you that really super cracklycrust that you usually miss from homebaked breads baking it inside a Dutchoven is what helps do that because ittraps steam and if you have a steam oventhatgreat you can you can inject your havingthe steam most Wellman ovens can’t dothat electric ovens tend to be a littlebit better about this because electricovens don’t need to vent gas out so agas oven as it burns gas you need tovent the byproducts of that combustionout so gas ovens just vent automaticallyso they don’t hold moisture in them verywell electric ovens tend to be sealedbetter so you can put like a pan ofwater or you can splash some water inthe bottom of the oven and that steamwill actually stay in there and help yousteamed bread if you don’t want to do itinside a Dutch oven but the easiestsolution is really to bake it directlyinside a Dutch oven in your oven andthat’s the big sort of trick in thisrecipe aside from the whole no kneadingthing right so that breads gonna bakefor about twenty to thirty minutes withthe awit the lid on then I’m gonna popthe lid off and bake it for anothertwenty to thirty minutes until it’s doneand then we’re ready to eat them and inthe meantime I’m gonna get back to thesteak in the fridge so you’ll find thatvideo sometime soon that’s what thisthyme and rosemary and shallots areanyhow I will be back with you inalright I’m in the middle of my steakvideo here you can see the steaks in astove but it’s been about 20 minutes orso since the bread went into the oven soI’m gonna take off the lid and check onitand in fact I already check on it you’llsee that in the stake video of it allright there we go so you see it’s hadthat nice oven spring it’s puffed up Imean you can also see it has this kindof shiny gelatinized coating and that’sexactly what you’re looking for thatcomes from the the steam that you getbuilt up inside the Dutch oven andthat’s what’s going to give you thatsuper nice crackly crust all right lidsoff I’m gonna let it continue baking nowprobably another 30 minutes or so allright so now it’s been I think about 40ish minutes or so and for some reason Icouldn’t find my bread knife socontinuing with the theme of it doesn’treally matter let me find a landing spotfor that landing spot for the batch ovencontinue with that theme of it doesn’treally matter we’re gonna cut it openwith a regular knife and there you go sonice crackly crust[Music]I just hot normally you’d want to letthis cool before you cut it open but I’ma little bit eager to see what it lookslike on the inside so I’m just going todo it know what that wasso bread knife would be the ideal toolfor this job but I’m using a hot noodleregular old chef’s knife is this what Igot alright so there you go that’s thechrome structure on the inside you seeplenty of holes nice big holes softspringy and a really nice thick cracklycrust and you get that again from thebaking it in the Dutch ovenso no kneading at all all you do is waitand you bake it inside a Dutch oven thiswhat you get I’m going to grab somebutter here some butter let’s give thisa taste can you hear that wait listen tothis mmmit’s too hot to even spread butter huhmmm I could use just a little bit ofsalt because of my bad math mistakeyesterday but sit home on today toeverybody good boy[Applause]no need bread this is the easiest breadyou can make fine you later