Here are two ways to make bread without kneading dough. One makes extremely good bread; the other makes absolutely great bread.
I’ve been a fan of the absolutely great bread at Jim Lahey’s Sullivan Street Bakery here in New York: dark, crunchy crust; substantial, chewy and moist (in the best possible way) interior “crumb”. I was shocked when my first attempt produced a great loaf of bread. Get the book and follow the directions; they’re foolproof. If you’re a subscriber, watch my video.
Five Minutes a Day really will get you a terrific home-baked bread. In fact, you’ll get a few loaves. The idea here is to mix up a big batch of dough, store it in the fridge for up to two weeks, and tear off a hunk every few days. You’ll spend ten minutes preparing the whole batch, but just five minutes each day you bake a bread. Fresh from the oven for breakfast or dinner. If this sounds like you, get the book; watch my video if you subscribe.
Both techniques make Better Cheaper bread that you’ll appreciate one very Slow bite after another.
To make your own Sullivan Street Bakery-quality bread, you’ll need a Dutch oven for rising the dough and baking the bread in an oven within your oven. To get truly great results, Lahey recommends that you weigh the ingredients instead of eyeballing levels in a measuring cup. So I found a Better Cheaper compact and, really, very cool little digital scale. And I get amazing bread every time.
If you’re going to spend five minutes a day for your fresh daily bread, you’ll need a large food storage container like the one I link to here. The large mixing bowl and four-cup measure make things very easy and greatly reduce the chance you’ll make a mess with all that flour and water.
And it’s not just great bread. You get great sandwiches, great bread pudding, great bread crumbs. A New Way Every Day for a year. For $10. Subscribe now. Raise Your Standard of Living + Lower Your Cost of Living.
The Books
My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method, by Jim Lahey
Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking, by Jeff Hertzberg, M.D. and Zoe Francois
The Tools
Bowl Scraper
Pastry Scraper & Cutter
5 Qt Double Dutch Oven, pre-seasoned cast iron, 10-1/4″ diameter
Kitchen Scale
Measuring Cup and Spoon Set
Digital Measuring Cup & Scale combined. Honest. For the cook who has everything.
Large (1-qt) Measuring Cup
Oven Thermometer
Pizza Paddle
4-qt Pyrex Mixing Bowl
6-qt Storage Container
The Ingredients
Red Fife Bread Flour, Anson Mills, 100% whole grain
All-Purpose Flour from Hodgson Mill
Bread Flour from Great River Organic Milling
Baking Yeast from Barry Farm