hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with no need country-bred that's
right this delicious and gorgeous loaf is part bread recipe part science
experiments in part fun family project when you're all stuck in the house
together looking for things to do and while this procedure is very simple it
does take about 24 hours to do start to finish so if you want this today make
sure you start it yesterday and what we'll want to do first is add some flour
to a large mixing bowl and I'm going to be using two kinds okay I'm gonna start
with some bread flour although regular all-purpose flour will
work and then I'm also gonna add a little bit of whole wheat flour which in
my case is gonna be some sprouted spelt flour which is by far my favorite
whole-grain flour to bake with and then to our flours we will add a little bit
of dry active yeast and I mean a little bit okay a no need bread recipe only
needs about a quarter teaspoon of yeast and since apparently there's a big yeast
shortage going on that is some good news and then what we'll do is give that a
quick stir with a wooden spoon before we stir in two cups of cold water and I
know we usually use warm water when we make bread but with this because we're
gonna let it rise for such a long time some cold fresh water from the tap
actually works out better and what we want to do here is stir this with the
wooden spoon for about three minutes until a very wet extremely sticky dough
forms and then once that's been accomplished we'll go ahead and add the
last ingredient which will be some kosher salt or sea salt or any salt that
doesn't have any additives and that's it we'll go ahead and give that another
stir for another two minutes or so at which point believe it or not our
dough will be done and by the way there's actually two reasons we don't
have to knead this first of all we can't right this is way too wet and sticky to
work with our hands and then secondly we don't have to rely on needing to build
gluten because when you let a dough ferment and rise for a very long time it
actually develops gluten all on its own which is nice but anyway what we'll do
once our salts been mixed in is simply wrap this in foil and let it sit out at
room temp for about 18 hours alright give or take which is why I generally
like to start this in the afternoon sometime so we can bake it up sometime
in the afternoon the next day so like I said we'll go ahead and cover
that and let it sit for 18 hours at which point if everything's gone
according to plan it should look something like this oh yeah that is
looking good and very bubbly but more like a scientific experiment than a
bread dough but that's okay because just watch and at this point we'll go ahead
and take a spatula and we will deflate this by scraping down the sides after
which we'll kind of slide our spatula underneath and fold the dough over the
top of itself like this okay sort of turning the bowl like this as we go
and besides deflating and degassing the dough we're also giving all that gluten
that developed a nice stretch and that's it once we've done that about a dozen
times or so we will go ahead and scrape this extremely soft and sticky dough
onto a well floured surface okay be very generous with the flour and we will also
want to sprinkle some over the top and it might look like we have a little too
much on the table but we're gonna use a lot of that on our hands as we do the
next step which is somehow someway form this into a loaf shape and initially
we're just sort of slapping it back and forth trying to get it to release from
the table and then once it does we'll use a combination of rolling and folding
and turning and tucking until we have the dough formed into some kind of
uniform shape and while you're doing this make sure you keep your hands well
floured and by the way the shape does not matter right it could be round it
could be oval but what does matter I see you end up with a nice smooth skin over
the surface and really once you achieve that you should just stop which is not
easy because this feels really really good right you'll see and then what
we'll do once we are happy with our shape and we have a nice smooth surface
is transfer this onto a Silpat lined baking sheet or if you don't have one of
those you can sprinkle down a whole bunch of cornmeal and once our dough is
Panda up we can do a little fine-tuning but not too much all right we want to
make sure this looks homemade and in fact that's why we call a country bread
so that it doesn't really matter what it looks like okay US country folks just
want to eat some bread we're not trying to impress anyone with a perfect loaf
that's what French bakeries in the city are for but anyway once we formed our
loaf and it's on a pan what we'll do is let this rest somewhere uncovered for
two hours or until it doubles in size and personally my favorite spot would be
inside it turned off oven but no matter where you leave yours about two hours
later it should look something like this and it will have approximately doubled
in size although because our dough is so wet
most of that's gonna happen outward as opposed to upward and then at this point
we will do two things one of which is optional we will preheat our oven to 450
and then if we want we will make one slash down the center with a very very
very sharp knife or a razor and sometimes I do this and sometimes I
don't it depends on my mood so I'll let you decide
I mean you are after all the Steve Nash of whether it is slash man I miss
basketball and by the way the main reason for the slash is simply to
prevent random ruptures in the crust in other spots all right so it's really
just an appearance thing and then before this goes in the oven if you have a
spray bottle I like to give the dough a light misting with water which is gonna
help it develop an even more beautiful crust but that is also optional and it's
gonna look great even if we don't do this and that's it our pan is now ready
to transfer into the center of a 450 degree oven for about 30 minutes or
until beautifully browned and looking like this oh yeah that does look like it
came from some artisan bakery but it didn't you made that you can always test
this with a thermometer but the old-school way to tell if this is done
is by giving it the old tap a tap
and if it sounds like that it's probably done all right it will have a nice
hollow sound and that's it all we have to do is transfer that onto a rack to
cool and cool completely okay if you slice into really hot bread you're gonna
lose moisture and it's gonna dry out although off the record if it's still a
little bit warm you can probably get away with it and fair warning as this
cools it's gonna contract and it's gonna get bumpy but that's okay because those
bumps are from bubbles and it's the bubbles that make the bread as you'll
see here as I slice in and that was looking just about perfect in fact let
me go to a tighter shot so you can see and even though it takes many many hours
by using this no-knead method with such a wet dough the texture you're gonna get
here is just incredible okay that outside is going to feature the perfect
amount of crustiness and the inside will be wonderfully light with just the right
amount of chewiness and yeah spreading on some butter is highly recommended so
I finished that end piece and cut another slice and of course you're not
supposed to slice on your marble slab with your nice serrated knife a lot
since the bread is the same color as my wooden cutting board it just doesn't
look as good so I took one for the team and not only does this super easy no
need technique produce a great texture but in general breads that have a long
fermentation time always seem to have a better flavor oh and I should mention if
this looks familiar give or take a little bit of olive oil
and a slightly different technique this is pretty much the same as our ciabatta
bread in fact if you shape this into a rectangle that's what you can call it
but anyway for a little bit of dessert I'm gonna spread some jam on this last
piece and as I ate that I couldn't help but wonder about all the people that
have no idea just how simple it is to make bread I mean it's just mixing up
some water and flour with a little bit of yeast and a touch of salt and then a
day later with a very small amount of effort you have this which is why I
really do hope you give this a try soon and also share this with those people I
was just referring to so please follow the links below for the ingredient
amounts a principle written recipe and much more info as usual and as always
enjoy
you