My new Bread

Since I feel I have the baking department pretty much covered, it is rare that I make a new and exciting discovery. The fact that I dedicate a whole blog entry just to this bread shows you the level of my excitement! It just goes to show, that you can always learn something new. As many of you know, I started baking bread when I moved to the U.S. over 10 years ago. While I think I make several varieties pretty successful, it is very hard to produce a loaf at home that tastes like from an artisan bakery (or in Germany, almost any bakery). The home ovens are not hot enough, I don't work with various stages of fermentation and starters, procuring good flour etc., all this contributes to the fact, that you can not make a "Bakery" loaf at home. So when I tasted this new "no knead bread" at a friends house, made by her father, who is a quite experienced baker, I was floored, I could not believe it, it was just perfect. And the best part is, it is extremely easy, idiot proof (if you follow the steps) and the variations are pretty much endless.

So here is the story. A while ago the New York times published a recipe for a "no knead bread", bakes inside a Dutch Oven in an very hot oven. This recipe proved to be not very consistent in its results, so the "American Testkitchen" (a PBS TV Show) and "Cooks Illustrated" worked on it and perfected it. You use a very high liquid to flour ratio and let the dough sit for 8-18 hours to ferment. So instead of kneading to produce the long gluten strands you let time and enzymes work for you. The protein strands in the flour are broken down and realigned. Then you knead only 10 times and let it rise for 2 hours. The second trick is, that they bake the bread inside a Dutch Oven. Being inside a closed space helps the bread to rise faster, cook, and built a nice crust, because the moisture can not escape. For a rich flavor, they replace some of the water with beer (beer and bread are very related) and add a little vinegar for depth. The complex flavor the bread achieves is amazing.

Sounds interesting? Want to know more? Here is the link to the article, it is well worth reading for everyone, who makes bread at home:

http://www.cooksillustrated.com/byissue.asp#topOfPage

Don't worry about becoming a member, they give you this free trial. I actually had several free trials, so now I had to go out and actually by the magazine, because I could not get in for free anymore. But it was well worth it.