Ttrockwood and bcc made very good suggestions about the yeast and flour. I am trying to think about something very obvious…
You threw the bread dough in the cast iron Dutch Oven and you do cover it, right?
I understand the official instruction is: “Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes,”
Would you consider trying to reduce the time after remove the lid and bake. I wonder if somehow that is the step over-drying it. I would try to pay attention what the bread looks like after you first uncover the lid. If the bread looks soft and moist shortly after you uncover the lid, and then becomes hard and dry during the latter 30 min, then… I wonder if that need to be revised for you.
@sck, I’ve been thinking about what could be causing your problems with the no-knead bread, and I think it’s the temperature. It’s too hot. When you throw the dough into the hot pot and cover it, the trapped moisture keeps a crust from forming too soon, thus allowing the loaf to expand. Your loaves are not expanding. Therefore, maybe, you are either not properly trapping the moisture, or the temperature is so high that the crust forms too soon. Hope that helps.
@sck are you using a Dutch oven as large as the one in this picture? The combination of the parchment pulling technique I mentioned upthread and a smaller Dutch oven have given me a bit more lift than you describe. Also, when do you take it out of the oven? (an Instant read thermometer can be helpful ).
For today’s loaf, I used the exact proportions you listed, except I used 1/2 tsp actice dry yeast. The easiest and most economical route is to use this 88 cent loaf pan from Walmart. Butter the sides and bottom, plop in the dough (all of it for your batch size), sort of even it out the best you can with a light touch, preheat oven to 425F, proof until it’s just peaking over the rim, use scissors to cut a slash down the middle (just try your best), and bake for 40 minutes. I go for an internal temp of 200F. This one was left too long, came out at 205F.
The bread turned out actually acceptable this time (at least its a piece of edible bread), a bit to my surprise. I think a few adjustments made some differences:
When I propped the dough into the dutch oven, it unintentionally folded onto itself (hence the crease at the top), creating some thickness, I think that helped making the bread ‘higher’ in the middle and making it more moist in the center.
I lowered the oven temperature to 425 (versus usually 450 or above if the oven temperature started to drift).
I took the bread out of the oven sooner. I thought I was intentionally underbaking it but it turned out probably just right to just overbaked (for a white flour bread, and see bottom pictures). The shorter time seemed to help make the crust less ‘enamal-crushing’.
I think I’d get mix some whole wheat flour with the all-purpose soon to try a more ‘rustic’ version. I’d prefer the bread to rise a bit more and be less dense in the middle, so I’d probably add more yeast next time.
Thank you for all your help! This has been very helpful!
By the way, when you said your bread was very hard, did you only mean the crust or the entire thing? If it is just the crust overly hard, and the interior is soft and fluffy, then to me, it is the last step which was messed up. Then just shorten the last step. If the bread was hard thoroughly, then the problem must have started from a much earlier point.
I don’t know how I missed your bread photos post. Yeah, the bread looks fine to me. Looks like you have a crust with a fairly soft interior. I agree with you that the interior can raise a little more. Overall, it looks good to me.
It sounds to me as though you might not have gotten adequate gluten development with your earlier loaves, which IMO can be a problem with the no-knead technique. Generally speaking, the long rising time will result in adequate gluten development to trap the gas bubble that cause the bread to rise, but not always (depending on a number of other factors). I get much better and more consistent results with this type of high-hydration, long-rise bread by doing a few slap-and-folds with the dough at some stage of development, either at the beginning or before the second rise. I know the Lahey recipe says just to fold it over itself once or twice before the second rise, but I find it needs more than that to bake up into a loaf that rises well and holds its shape. I typically fold it 4-5 times, let it rest for a few minutes, and then actually shape it into a boule before letting it rise for an additional 2+ hours.
That could very well be a factor. I distinctly remember folding that dough more than what I usually do because I was trying to get it back to be more of a ball shape.
That said, I think the flour to water measurement in the original recipe may be off- too much water. I started the 10 year anniversary recipe today with a mix of whole wheat flour a. Its hard to see, but the dough is much drier. This dough I don’t see any trouble shaping.
2-2/3 cup white flour
1-1/3 cup whole wheat
2 tsp salt
slightly more than 1/2 tsp yeast
2 cup water
Have you tried the 5-Minutes-Day way without a cast iron pot and instead using a pizza stone and below a pan with hot water to create steam. We make many different breads this way and it works everytime.
Interesting… but is the pan of water really be enough? I mean obviously it does… I only mean… do you think it creates MORE steam than an enclosed cast iron Dutch Oven.
I have never tried the dutch oven method but have made ~100 breads with the 5-Minute a Day method and never had problems with any bread (crust, flavor, rise etc). And it creates a lot of steam
The 5-minute master recipe is a little less hydration. No, the pan of water doesn’t give you anywhere near as much steam surrounding the loaf as a Dutch oven. The steam from the pan of water still helps, though. In my opinion, more important than the rise you might get from steam is the better crust steam gives you, with small crispy bubbles. Otherwise the crust can come out very acrid and hard to chew. (You can tell right away from the smell when a loaf comes out the oven.) When I can’t move my pizza steel in order to properly fit a Dutch oven, I will use an upside down stainless steel bowl to cover the loaf.
With a loaf pan, I sometimes use a foil cube I’ve made to encompass the loaf. But usually I’m not looking for an open crumb or hard crust in a sandwich loaf, so I’ll just use steam from a pan underneath.
King Arthur has a very interesting writeup on this topic. I don’t agree with all of their conclusions.
I just wanted to add that, although I am mostly a convert to weight measurements, exact measurements often don’t work for bread. For the same dough, sometimes I will need less water, sometimes more water. Also, flour can be different between seasons or depending on how or for how long you’ve stored it.
