Note: This is written by someone else.
We're making no-knead bread today. Here is most of the stuff you'll need for this, and almost every other no-knead dough.
I use the 3qt (~3L) bowl and cover it with the inverted 4qt bowl so it looks like a mushroom, kinda.
I like the red silicon one. They're all over the place these days. The little one is a little little, but it'll get the job done. There's another kind of plastic scraper that looks kinda like a "D". I don't have one, but it would be a good option as the curved side can scrape bowls while the flat side can divide dough and scrape flat surfaces.
Not strictly needed if you don't want it, but I do. I use a 4.5x8.5 pan for all my yeast breads. A 9x5 will work, but you'll have to proof and bake it longer. The first (from the left) metal one is pretty bad. The sides of the bread always end up super light, so I don't use it. The middle glass one is what I used for years. I like them, but some people don't... I forget what their complaints are. These days I use the (Lodge) cast iron pan. It behaves pretty much the same way as the glass, but it's less breakable and has better handles.
You want a danish whisk. The metal handled one is my go-to for most yeast bread doughs. It gets everything together with minimal effort and time. The wood handled one is nice and gets the job done faster when it works, but struggles with drier, stiffer doughs. If you don't have have a danish whisk, (get one) a wooden spoon or silicon spatula will work. Your hands will also work.
I use the Mercer Cutlery "M23210". It was $15 and is wicked sharp. I had to get that little cutting board so it'd stop messing up my big pastry board.
Get nice ones. I like more cylindrical cups so I can estimate halves/thirds if I need to.
Get one that can do ounces (accurate to at least 1/4) and grams (accurate to the gram). Tare is cool as well.
I use the wood one for setting the pan on and the metal one for the loaf. The wood one keeps my counter safe from extreme heat and the metal one keeps my bread from getting soggy sitting on the counter.
Not pictured, but I guess it belongs here instead of ingredients. I find it doesn't matter what you get. Everything has worked fine for me (yes, even great value as much as I hate to admit it).
I don't use it anymore. I found ways around it, but many people do use it all the time. I just don't like going through all that plastic.
A good thing to have and use.
I will be basing this off of the "american sandwich bread" recipe from Bread Illustrated to hopefully show how to turn any recipe into a no-knead one. It's a good book and actually has some no-knead recipes already in there for you.
Enjoy my super excellent pictures of the recipe, and do read through it as I won't be explaining much outside of what's different.
Here are the ingredients I will be using.
You want King Arthur bread flour. Ceresota/Heckers bread flour and Bob's Red Mill bread flour are probably also good options, but I can't find Ceresota and haven't tested Bob's yet. Gold Medal and Pilsbury are going to be weaker, so they might need more love and attention (aka folds), but they'll work. King Arthur, Ceresota/Heckers, and Bob's all-purpose flours will probably work as well.
Salt doesn't matter for baking, but I find store brand iodized salts have a strong off-taste while name brands have less of that. It doesn't show up in bread, though.
Honey doesn't matter much for this. I use Local Hive wildflower because it's a good quality/price. I'd avoid darker honeys like buckwheat honey as they have a stronger flavor that might affect the bread. (Buckwheat honey is kinda gross. 2/10 would not get again)
Yeast is personal preference. I don't like store brand yeasts because they seem less consistent and seem to lose potency faster than name brands (fleischmann, red star, saf). Fleischmann's is what the stores around me carry, so that's what I use. I also use active dry yeast instead of instant yeast for my no-knead stuff. Active dry yeast has bigger chunks and is supposedly less potent than instant. It's also supposed to "kick in" later than instant yeast, which is what we want. I don't use fresh yeast as it's hard to find and not economical for me. If you are using active dry, I just measure it out exactly as the recipe calls for even though they say you're supposed to use more active dry than instant. You should also mix it in with the liquids instead of the dry stuff (which I forgot for this dough as it doesn't seem to matter much for the wetter doughs I'm used to). If you're using instant... maybe cut back a bit? It's safest to just follow the recipe and change it afterword if you need to. I have no advice for fresh yeast that fresh yeast users don't already know, probably.
Not pictured are milk, butter, and water.
Now for the action.
Always measure flour by weight. I find measuring cups to be accurate enough for liquids. I find home kitchen scales to be less accurate (and harder to use) than a measuring spoon for small ingredients. If you're using a weaker flour, you may want to omit some flour (2-3 oz?) at the start here. Gluten forms faster/better in wetter doughs, so starting with a wet dough and adding the extra flour after a fold or two could accelerate the process. To add the extra flour, you'd basically knead it in, so it wouldn't really be no-knead anymore (although you'd only be kneading it for a minute tops). You could also just completely omit some flour or add extra water/milk and use a wetter dough. The dough might behave a little different, but it'll work.
I forgot to mention you'll want a 4 cup measuring cup like this. I melt the butter in the measuring cup, add the water and honey, mix that until the honey dissolves, and add the milk. It should be around room temperature. If it's too hot, you could kill the yeast or just make it work too fast. If it's too cold, you'll be proofing for a long time. Then mix the yeast in if you're using active dry or fresh yeast (I forgot to do this and you'll see what happens)(instant yeast shouldn't need to go in the liquids, but it wouldn't hurt to do so). Add that to the dry stuff. A 3qt (3L) bowl should be plenty big. Mix it until a dough forms. Make sure there are no dry/wet spots. Give it an airtight-ish cover, either plastic wrap or a well fitting bowl/cover, and let it sit 15-20 minutes
Video: fold1.webm
The general idea is to fold it over itself, give it a quarter turn, and repeat for four folds total. With wetter doughs, you might need a bowl scraper to get under it, but this dough is pretty well behaved. After you're done folding, re-cover it and let it sit for 30 minutes.
Video: fold2.webm
Before every fold you should check how the gluten is coming along. Unfortunately, my hand was in the way, so you don't really get to see it, but it was just about ready. I gave it another folding and let it sit another 30 minutes. You can also see I figured out a better folding technique for stiffer doughs by the end. Pick it up and pull on it instead of waiting around for gravity. Just a word of caution, you don't want to rip it when you're pulling on it.
Video: fold3.webm
As you can hopefully see, the gluten is stronk and the dough is ready. I give it one more fold for good measure and let it sit until doubled. Time is an asterisk. You can also see little speckle-chunks in there. I think that's the yeast that didn't actually dissolve in the dough. I could have tried to knead it out or something, but I wanted to see what would happen if I left it. It was very slow to proof (could have also been because it was cold), and the speckles did not disappear.
Video: shaping.webm
Not much to say other than what the recipe already says. I prefer rolling towards myself, but either way works.
They say to cover it with greased plastic. That works, but I just put it in a steamed oven. You need to cover/steam to prevent the outside from drying and forming a crust. If you do steam the oven, make sure it's steamed enough (check if a crust is forming) and make sure it stays steamed enough. My oven has a "proof" setting and can hold low temperatures (80-100F)bread I made more recently, so I use that to speed things along here. Usually, with an unenriched dough (one without milk, butter, eggs, honey, etc) I'd let it sit at room temperature. Proof it low and slow for more flava. With enriched doughs, I usually do 80-90F since most of the flavor is coming from the enrichments anyways. Here I did 100F because I was getting tired of waiting and knew it'd be slow anyways. I would also probably proof it more than they say. Maybe it's because it's a stiffer dough or maybe it's because I didn't dissolve the yeast properly (probably both), but my loaf had almost no oven spring (when the bread grows right before baking). Theirs is a little short for my taste in the pictures they show, so maybe that's just how it's supposed to be, but my crumb wasn't too great either. I do think extra proofing was required for me.
Nothing much to add, but know your oven. Different ovens bake differently. I have to set mine to 365F to get 350F and cover it with aluminum foil or the top will get too dark. You can use a probe thermometer to check the temperature, or you can just tap the middle and see if it sounds hollow. Probably do both until you're confident with the tap.
Not too thrilled with this loaf. If I made this again (which I'm not), I'd probably drop some flour, make sure to dissolve the yeast properly, and possibly give it more time to proof at the end.
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