Zuries Overnight No Knead Bread Food

OVERNIGHT NO-KNEAD BREAD

Steps:

• Make sure you read the cooking notes before you start.
• The night before:
• Step 1 - In a mixing bowl, combine the two flours, salt and yeast, and stir to combine.
• Step 2 - Warm the water in a small sauce pan over medium heat. When just warm (not hot yet), pour the water into the flour mixture and stir well to combine.
• Note: Use a wooden spoon or even French rolling pin to combine. Do not knead - just mix until no dry flour is visible. The mixture will be very sticky and will not form into a ball, this is normal.
• Step 3 - Cover the bowl tightly with a plastic film and poke 5 tiny holes in the top with a toothpick, to allow the gases to escape.
• Leave on the counter, and allow to rise overnight at room temperature.
• In the morning:
• The dough should have tripled in size, and have a spongy appearance with big air bubbles.
• Step 1 - Remove the plastic film from the bowl, turn the bowl upside down and scrape dough onto an unfloured work surface. Lightly dust the top of the dough with flour and dust the work surface around it as well with flour.
• Flip the dough so that the "floured side" is now on your work surface and the unfloured side is facing upwards.
• Step 2 - Starting from the right side of the dough, lightly stretch the dough out (to the right) and fold it a little over halfway over the dough. Do the same with the left side. Do the same with the top.
• Grab the bottom (still unfolded side), stretch it and pull it over the 3 folded sides of the dough. Flip the dough upside down so the seamless rounded side is now on top.
• Step 3 - With both hands circling around the base of the dough ball, roll only the bottom part of the dough around your work surface, allowing the tension to "close" the bottom of the dough ball. The folds at the bottom should mostly disappear - it is fine if it isn't completely closed.
• Step 4 - Flip the dough into a mixing bowl/banneton lined with a clean dish cloth and cover with another cloth (the almost closed up side should be facing upwards)
• Step 5 - Place your cast iron combo cooker (or Dutch Oven) into your oven and preheat the oven to 500F (260C) degrees.
• Once the oven is pre-heated - working quickly and safely, remove the cast iron combo from the oven and place on your stove top. Quickly flip your dough into the center of the cast iron and score a square into the top of the dough with a blade/very sharp knife.
• Step 6 - Cover and place the cast iron into the oven and turn down the temperature to 450F (232C) degrees for 25min. After 25min, remove the lid and bake for another 15-20min at 450F (232C) degrees. When a dark golden color appears, remove bread from the oven and cast iron and place on a cooling rack.
• Allow the bread to cool for at least one hour before slicing.

OVERNIGHT NO KNEAD BREAD | WITH COMMERCIAL YEAST

Steps:

• In the evening before baking day (for me it was at 7 PM ), mix flour, salt and yeast.
• Add the water and mix with your hands, a wooden spoon or a Danish dough whisk, until combined and no flour is left dry.
• Cover and leave at room temperature for an hour.
• After an hour do around 10 stretch and folds, picking up the dough from one side, stretching it and then bringing it onto its opposite side or the center of the dough. Turn the bowl around 90 degrees and continue the same procedure 8-10 times.
• Cover and rest another hour, then do a second stretch and fold.
• Cover and leave it for the night.
• Next morning (7 AM for me), check the dough, it should have doubled in volume. If not, leave it some more.
• When dough is ready, preheat the cast iron pot with its lid, in the oven, at 220 °C.
• For the last fermentation you can use a proofing basket, or a bowl with a tea towel on top, or a strainer with the tea towel. Sprinkle flour generously on whichever you choose.
• Sprinkle lightly some flour on the working bench.
• With a dough scraper or a spatula, detach the dough from the sides and turn it onto the floured bench.
• Fold a few times the dough, grabbing it from the exterior and bring it into the center. Pinch it in the center and then turn the dough 90 degrees and fold again. Do this 8 times, or until you can feel the dough is getting tight.
• Then flip it with the seam side down, and with both of your hands, drag the ball from the far end towards you, tucking it underneath a little. This will create tension on the surface of the ball. Rotate 90 degrees and repeat the dragging and tucking, 4 times in total.
• Place the dough, flipped with the seam side up, into the proofing recipient you chose.
• Cover and leave to rest 45 min or until when poked with the finger, the dough comes back up slowly and leaves a slight dent into the surface.
• Remove the pot from the oven with the help of some oven mittens.
• Flip the dough onto a parchment paper, slice once in the center, from one side to the other, with a sharp knife or a razor blade. This first cut has to be quite deep, maybe 1 cm, so that the dough can have place to rise. You can make additional ornamental cuts on the sides if you like.
• With the help of the parchment paper, transfer the dough into the cast iron pot, cover with the lid, and bake in the preheated oven for 30 min.
• After 30 min, remove the lid and bake for 15 min more.
• Remove the bread carefully and leave on a cooling rack until completely cooled.

ZURIE'S OVERNIGHT NO-KNEAD BREAD

Steps:

• *** Since first making this bread according to the original instructions (which caused a lot of mess), I've simplified the process. I have now bought a fairly deep plastic bowl with sloping edges, so it has a smallish bottom. The plastic seems almost -- not quite -- non-stick, and this is the method I use now:.
• In such a lightly greased plastic bowl, put the flour, and add the yeast, sugar and salt. You may want to add less salt, but we found the original amount (1 1/4 teaspoon) not enough. Mix through.
• Add the water and stir the lot through until well mixed to a nice, smooth, quite sloppy dough.
• Cover bowl with plastic wrap and put a kitchen terry towel or two over the top as well. Stand in a draught-free place for 18 hours.
• For me it works best to mix this up at 3pm. This means the dough is ready at 9am the next morning and I don't even have to get up early like my grandmother did to bake those huge farm loaves in the old days.
• After 18 hours the dough should be puffy and have little bubble holes on top and have more or less doubled in size, but don't worry too much about that.
• Instead of -- as the original recipe said -- turning out the dough on to a towel, do the following: From the sides of the bowl, scrape the dough away with light movements and fold it over on itself with floury fingers. Turn the bowl round and round, flattening the dough by repeating this "folding over". LIGHTLY press a little flatter.
• Cover bowl with same (now messy) plastic used before, and same terry towels.
• Leave to rise again -- 2 hours long.
• Half an hour before the 2 hours are up, put your oven on 450 deg F/220 deg Celsius. (I find that in my convection - fan - oven I can use a slightly lower heat: 215 - 210C, but the difference is not important).
• At the same time you need a heavy pot WITH a fitting lid, and this will go into the cold, heating-up oven, empty. The lid is to keep in the steam and cause that wonderful crust to form.
• Nothing beats an iron pot. Le Creuset will do too, and ceramic has been mentioned.
• I use a non-stick oval-shaped iron pot with a domed lid. You do NOT need a "6 - 8 quart pot" (sounds crazy to me) as stated in the original recipe. It's a small bread. My iron pot is a 2 1/2 quart pot, which translates to roughly 2 1/2 litres as well.
• I grease the pot and lid with REAL butter, and sometimes I slosh in some olive oil. I don't know why, but I feel I should do it. Now PUT THE POT IN THE OVEN, lid on.
• After the 2 hours of the 2nd rising, and when the oven and pot has reached its correct heat, take out that piping hot pot very carefully (I put it on one of my oven grids on a granite surface next to the oven).
• Have the covered dough nearby, and a silicone or other spatula. Tilt the plastic bowl over the smoking pot (don't let it touch the very hot pot) and with spatula or fingers scrape the dough lightly and evenly into the hot pot. It will sizzle as it falls into the pot; don't worry about that.
• Shake the pot slightly to distribute the dough, put on the lid, and carefully shove the whole shebang into the hot oven.
• Bake 30 minutes with lid, then open oven and take off lid. Bake 15 - 30 minutes more, until your bread has a golden crust. I find that about 15 - 20 minutes after taking off the lid the bread is ready. Baking times will differ because ovens differ.
• Turn out, and swallow that saliva until it's just cooled enough so you can saw off the end part to eat with real butter. On your own.
• When cold, do not put in plastic bag. Use a paper bag at most. I simply turn it on to the cut side on the breadboard, and cover it with a kitchen towel. It lasts until it's been eaten, which doesn't take long. Do not refrigerate, which would be silly.
• ***A few points: 1. Z-mail me for questions 2. Your experience might be "messier" than mine; it depends on the consistency of the dough and the bowl you use. But greasing the bowl right at the start does help. 3. Keep to the hours mentioned. It's meant to be a sloooow rising process. 4. Be careful not to burn yourself! 5.I have just found, praise the angels, a wonderful, very fine stone-milled 100% organic flour, and have just put a loaf of that, for the first time, in the oven! I think this robust, Frenchified loaf just cries out for stone-milled flour, fine and creamy or almost white. 6. You could use 2 1/2 cups white bread flour + 1/2 cup fine rye flour. DO NOT USE wholewheat flour for this bread, except for maybe a handful: it does not have enough gluten for this bread.
• Good luck!
• And a warning, added months later: that pot you use MUST go into the oven empty, and must heat to the heat of the oven. I tried putting the dough in a cold pot yesterday, and the bread wasn't as successful. It didn't rise nearly as much, and didn't have that lovely artisanal cracked round top. So HEAT THE POT as instructed.
• MAKING A LARGER LOAF: The warning here is that I use my metric cups and spoons for this, which are very accurate! Fortunately I have a Pyrex measuring cup with both metric millilitres and Imperial fluid ounces, so I could measure the water absolutely equally.
• 4 x 250 ml flour, or 1 litre or 4 cups (1 quart).
• 3/4 teaspoon yeast, and stir into flour.
• 3/4 teaspoon sugar, stir into flour.
• 15 ml or 3 teaspoons salt.
• 600 ml or 19 fluid oz water (JUST under 2 1/2 American cups -- maybe 2 teaspoons less than 2 1/2 cups).
• (EDITED June 2008): My husband actually calculated -- I'm bad with maths! -- that the water should be 666 ml -- so add a dash more than 600 ml if you feel it's necessary. Just remember to bake this 2nd, larger recipe for the full hour. Also, he said the bread needed more salt. We don't eat a lot of salt and I'm not worried about the issue, so I now use 4 teaspoons, i.e. 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon).
• Best results are still with white bread flour, stone-milled, or all-purpose, and a little rye flour can be used too.
• Carry on as usual, grease the pot really well or pour some melted butter or olive oil into the hot pot and tilt it to grease bottom. By the way, a silicone spatula works a treat when you tilt the dough into the super-hot pot!
• YET ANOTHER NOTE: the 3-cup-flour bread is ready at plus-minus 45 minutes. I have found that the 4-cup-bread needs a full hour.