No-knead Sourdough Bread

• No kneading.
• 5 minutes to mix up enough dough for two week's of bread.

The idea is that you whip up a big batch of dough and store it in the fridge. When you want bread, you simply take out a hunk and bake it. 


I adapted this technique from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. It's an excellent book. Following its instructions will take you a tiny bit more time and trouble, but might get you a better result. I find my super-easy variation creates bread that is already far too delicious.

Ingredients

• 6.5 cups (780 grams) flour
• 1.5 tbsp yeast
• 1.5 tbsp sale (optional)
• 3 cups water

Instructions

1. Mix together the dry ingredients
2. Add the water (the temperature of the water doesn't matter)
3. Mix well. You can mix with a spoon, with your bare hands, or with an electric mixer.
4. Store in the refrigerator at least overnight and for up to two weeks. (After two weeks, it will be too watery to use.) Do not store in an airtight container--the gasses will make it explode.

WARNING: DO NOT STORE DOUGH IN AN AIRTIGHT CONTAINER. THE GASSES FROM THE YEAST WILL MAKE IT EXPLODE.

To bake the bread: 

1. Tear out a hunk of the dough
2. Form the hunk into the shape you wish and put it on a parchment-covered or greased cookie sheet. Or you can put it on a piece of foil on the bare oven rack. For best results, use a Silpat (see below) on a cookie sheet.
3. Put it in a cold oven and set the temperature to 450F.
4. Cook until golden brown. A baseball-sized hunk takes about 25 minutes to cook.

Gadgets to make this quicker:


A kitchen scale. This makes measuring for baking so much easier, and you won't have measuring cups to wash. I like the Escali model, but it's expensive. The advantage is that it has a capacity of 15 pounds.


A KitchenAid mixer. I just got one. I wish I'd bought myself one 20 years ago; I'd have saved so much time and aggravation over the years.


An extra KitchenAid mixing bowl so you can store the dough in the fridge rather than transferring it to another container.

A cover for the KitchenAid mixing bowl. Well, here's a mystery. It is not that easy to find the correct sized lid for whatever bowl you have. You might just want to buy the bigger lid and lay it on top of your bowl; you don't want a tight-fitting lid anyway, because the gasses from the yeast could explode if your form an air-tight seal.

More info:

The World's Easiest Sourdough BreadThis is a no-knead sourdough using easily-available ingredients and a simple pain a l'ancienne method.



Storing the dough in the fridge vastly improves the flavor. It draws out more of the flavor from the flour and perhaps reduces phytic acid in the same way that soaking grains does. The Pain a L'Ancienne technique, despite its name, is a very modern technique. 



By the way, this works with whole wheat flour and with einkorn flour.

Here's a post by the Nutrition Diva on the soaking of grains.