Hi Bold Bakers!
Now that fall is here and I’ve got the wood burning in my Alfa Pizza Oven, I thought this
would be the perfect time to share with you my recipe for no-knead cinnamon and raisin
bread.
This recipe is for amateurs and professionals alike.
So let’s get baking.
Throughout my career as a pastry chef, bread-making has always fascinated me, especially using
the no-knead technique.
Now we have made pretzels, cinnamon rolls, and brioche using this technique and it yields
you great texture, great flavor and the best thing about it is you can just mix it by hand
without the need for a machine so it makes life a lot easier.
We’re going to start out by making our dough in a large bowl.
You want to get it nice and big because we’re actually going to proof our dough in the same
bowl so you want to give it lots of nice room to grow.
In our bowl, we’re going to add in our flour.
Now what I like to do is add my flavor on one side of the bowl and my yeast on the other
side.
So add in your cinnamon because it’s lovely and warm cinnamon raisin bread, sugar because
it’s kind of a sweet bread, and then salt.
And then to the other side of the bowl add in your yeast.
Now the reason why I add my ingredients on separate sides of the bowl is that I don’t
want the yeast to land on top of the salt because if it does, it deactivates it.
So just add it on either side, give it a little bit of a mix up on each side, and then you
can mix them all in together.
Now an important ingredient in your bread is good-quality raisins.
You want to make sure that they’re nice and plump and juicy.
Take care not to buy small, shriveled-up ones.
You want to get nice big ones like these.
And then just give all your dry ingredients a mix around.
To our dry ingredients, we’re going to add in our wet, which is milk and water.
I like to have these at room temperature so it gives the yeast kind of a helping hand.
I don’t like to have them too cold.
And simply all you want to do is just mix it all together until it starts to form a
dough.
I actually just like to use my hands to bring my dough together because I know what’s
going on.
Is it too wet?
Is it too dry?
Is the dough coming together?
And I can tell right now that this is a really great dough.
Once you’ve formed your dough, we’re going to cover it tightly in cling wrap.
Now you want to do this to keep it nice and safe and not let any air get in at it.
And just to keep it extra warm, I like to lay a cloth over it to keep it nice and snug.
Now, this is where the magic happens when it comes to no-knead doughs.
We’re going to let this guy to sit at room temperature for around 12 to 18 hours to let
him ferment.
And what will happen is that all the enzymes and everything in the dough and the yeast
will start to work together, grow and develop a really beautiful dough.
Now I know this seems kind of technical because bread baking is a science.
But when you think about it, take a little bit of a step back, yeast is a living organism
and what do you do to something that is living?
You need to give it water, you need to feed it, you need to keep it warm, give it a little
bit of sugar, and you will have a fantastic bread at the end.
Now here’s the dough I made 15 hours ago.
I wanted to show you what yours should look like once it’s rested for all that time.
As you can see, it has grown a lot, probably two to three times the size.
And then if you peel back the cling wrap and just give it a bit of a smell, you get all
of those lovely boozy, a little bit kind of a acidic kind of a smell and that is exactly
what you want because what that is, is flavor in your bread.
If you touch the top of your dough, what you’ll see is all of these lovely bubbles.
If you look right here, these are gluten strands and they came from fermenting our dough overnight.
That is nice, strong dough and they’re going to yield really nice big bubbles in your bread.
Okey dokey, I’m going to take it out of the bowl and put it on a floured surface.
This is why bread-making is so fascinating to me because it is a living thing and the
better you treat it, the more love you give it, the better result you get out of it.
Now what you want to do here is just give your hands a little bit of a dusting and then
just fold over your bread on itself kind of like a book.
And then just knock out the air.
Now don’t worry if you’re thinking you’re knocking out all of the bubbles because you
are, yes.
But what’s going to happen is that you’re actually strengthening it, not weakening it.
And if you make it even stronger, then it can hold even bigger bubbles when it grows,
so remember that.
Okay now that we’ve knocked out the air, I’m just going to shape it a little bit
on my floured surface.
And what we’re trying to create is a little bit of a boule type, which is round loaf.
And you just want to just work your bread on your surface to create that nice round.
Ok lovely.
Now I’m simply just going to transfer this onto a floured tray.
Give your tray a nice dusting of flour just so your loaf doesn’t stick on there, especially
when it’s proofing because it tends to let out a little bit of liquid.
And then just on with your loaf.
You know when you go to a bakery and you see beautiful artisanal loaves and they have kind
of a pattern on top of the bread, that usually comes from a bread basket.
I don’t often use bread baskets.
So what I like to do is a bit of a sneaky trick.
I put on a little bit of flour on top of my bread and then I take kind of a patterned
tea towel, I put it over the top, and then when the bread rests and proofs, it actually
grows up a little bit and you will get the pattern that’s on the tea towel on top of
your bread without a lot of the work.
It’s a great idea.
So now, I’m going to leave this at room temperature for around 45 minutes to an hour
and let it proof.
It could take a different amount of time depending on how hot your room is.
All you want to do is just let it grow and relax a little bit before we put it into the
oven.
It has been an hour and my bread is lovely and proofed.
And I’ll show you, as you can see it has spread out a little bit, which is what it’s
supposed to do.
So how you can tell your bread is proofed is if you press the dough with your finger,
and if it springs back too much, it means a little bit more time.
But if you press it, it doesn’t spring back too much, that means it’s proofed and it’s
ready for the oven.
So just before it goes into the oven, this is my favorite part.
You get to scour the top of your bread.
You can get really creative and do any design you like.
So with a sharp knife, I’m going to cut inwards.
Try and do once nice, clean cut.
I know it’s not always possible.
Now I’m just going to do a square, or I guess kind of a diamond shape, I suppose.
You can tell this dough has had a lot of love.
Now it’s ready for the oven.
Now I feel very fortunate to have a wood-burning oven because it gives the bread really good
flavor and it gives it that lovely thick crust as well that I’m always trying to get.
I’m going to put the recipe for the bread and also how you can cook it in a conventional
oven on BiggerBolderBaking.com.
So I wanted to show you guys really quick while it’s baking, to see how the bread
is turned up here on the bottom?
That is a sign of a good bread and that we didn’t over-proof it.
My timer’s gone off, my bread is looking fantastic so let’s take it out.
I am really happy with how this bread turned out.
It’s beautiful and brown all over and I can feel and hear.
Can you guys hear that?
A beautiful, thick crust, which is what I love.
And I really like all the scorched bits of flour around the edges too.
Now a good way to know that your bread is done, is if you flip it over, give it a tap
on the bottom and if it sounds hollow, then it’s cooked.
And then also, it should feel pretty light.
I’m going to slice this bread because I want you to see what it looks like on the
inside and how beautiful the texture is.
Can you hear the sound of the crust?
It’s really crunchy.
You see those lovely, plump raisins?
That’s why you use good quality raisins.
For me, this bread is really like the holidays because you get the lovely, warm flavors of
the cinnamon and all of the fruit, which we would eat a lot in Ireland around the holidays.
This is just my favorite type of bread, it’s just like a little slice of heaven.
I’m going to take a slice and butter it with some really good butter.
That’s my favorite way to eat it.
You cannot beat homemade bread especially something so sweet and fruity like this.
What I like to do if I have a little left over is have it for toast with some butter.
It is absolutely divine.
I really hope you enjoyed this bread episode with my pizza oven.
Thank you so much for watching and I’ll see you back here next Thursday for more Bigger,
Bolder, Baking.