Crusty Bread

Here's how I make my daily bread, which is actually surprisingly easy: just flour and water, with home-grown yeast. It's not quite the no-knead bread, but it does involve a long fermentation, and it uses a lid so you get that crust. And unlike the no-knead bread, this one has lots of little holes (no jam on the table). Not as cheap as the industrial Chorleywood stuff you get in supermarkets, but so much nicer, even without any salt. Go on, give your heart and kidneys a break!

Here's how I go about it:

Before I make dinner, I empty my jam jar of yeastie beasties into a bowl (fed, watered, acclimatised, and fizzing!), and leave some in the bottom to grow the next batch of leaven. Then I add a little flour to make a very soft dough, and add one pint of white bread flour, one pint of plain flour, and one pint of water. Give it a good mix with a spoon. Cover the bowl with cling film and put it in the (unheated) oven to rise. Note no kneading.

Then I make dinner and forget about the dough.

Next day (i.e. twenty-four hours later), before I make dinner, I take that big bowlful of bubbly gloop out of the oven, and add wholemeal flour to bring it up to a manageable consistency, kneading it in the bowl as I go. As a rough guess, I would think about a pint of wholemeal, which would give you a total of three measures of flour, and one water.

Once the dough is nice and rubbery without it sticking to my hands, I shape the dough into a ball, stretch it a little, and lay it in the oiled roasting tin. Sprinkle it with some porridge, poppy seeds, flour, whatever, put the lid on the tin, and stick it on top of the grill or extractor fan while I make the dinner and eat.

When I've had my dinner, I warm the oven, and put the roasting tin into the hot oven, with the lid still on (it'll have risen to the top, just hope it doesn't stick to the lid). Thirty to forty minutes later, take the loaf out of the tin, check it sounds hollow, and put the loaf back in the oven for a few minutes to let the bottom crust harden up a bit more. Then, put the loaf on its side, and let it cool (it crackles!).

If you want a round loaf, you could use an enamelled soup pot with with lid, a pyrex casserole dish, or a heavy cast iron pot (Dutch Oven), as per the Mark Bittman method. The amounts you use will vary depending on the size of your tin. For round edges, you would use less flour and water so it rises and stays up but doesn't actually fill the whole tin.

This bread keeps up to a week, depending on how you store it, and how tolerant you are about freshness. In a bag, the crust will go soft, and the inside tends to firm up, which does make it easier to cut, but it also starts to go mouldy after three to four days, especially on the bottom, where the crust is not as thick. I just cover the cut side with aluminium foil, and put it in the cupboard unbagged; that keeps it nice and crusty, but the outside does get quite hard after a while (remember, no preservatives, no salt, no flour improver; just flour and water). You could even use the same roasting tin as a bread bin.

And the yeastie beasties? They've been fed and watered: just add flour and warm water to make a thick pastey batter, wait for it go frothy again (which means they've been having a lot of fun multiplying and dividing). Put them in the fridge so you only have to feed them once or twice a week. Only trouble is, they frighten the milk (because of the lactobacilli), so keep a lid on the jar, and clean the outside to reduce exposure, and drink the milk a bit quicker.

Sources

Mark Bittman: No Knead Bread
Breadtopia: Almost No Knead bread
Sandor Ellix Katz: a book on all things fermentation, including sour dough starter