Semi-wholewheat Sourdough No-knead Bread

No-knead recipes are now everywhere and is quickly becoming the most popular bread baking method around. I first heard about it through NY-Time's food journalist, Mark Bittman, where he showed the simplicity of this method stating that even a 4-year-old could make a better bread than your typical baker. That was quite a statement. (Un)fortunately, I'm not 4 years old but I had to try it for myself anyway. First time was a success. I then saw my food guru, Chef John Mitzewich, from foodwishes.com do a Italian ciabatta with the same recipe, and later pizza dough. The road was open to experimentation...

The key to this bread is making a dough which isn't too dry or too wet in a flour/water ration of aproximately 2:1 with a very small amount of yeast and a teaspoon and a half of salt. For any good bread you need to deelope the gluten in the dough, which is basically two proteins which makes the flour elastic. This elasticity alows the dough to expand around the tiny bubbles made by the yeast fermenting. As a result the bread will rise and become more chewy and not be flat and crumbly. In traditional bread baking, gluten is developed by kneading the bread for about 10 minutes. Larger amounts of yeast is also needed to speed up the rising process.

In this no-knead method, however, the the mount of leavening is reduced and the kneading step is skipped, hence the name. A small amount of leavening agent is used which creates a slower rising, up to 18 hours. This in turn, not only helps developing the gluten by itself, it also makes the bread more flavoursome. I'd sofar only used yeast, but since I made my sourdough starter I've been experimenting with this. Here's the recipe I came up with:

Ingrediets:
120g wholewheat flour
340g bread flour
1.5 tsp salt
330 ml purified water
aprx. 60 ml sourdough starter
Alternative recipe - Ingredients 4-year-old method:
4 cups flour
2 cupswater
1.5 tsp salt
1/4 tsp yeast

Start by mixing the dry ingredients, flour and salt.

Whisk out the bubbles of your sourdough starter and measure out about 60 ml. Dissolve in the water. Add it to the flour.

Mix it together until you have a ball of dough. It shouldn't be too sticky, but likewise not to dry. This is where a bit of practice will help. Now you are done. Leave it covered at room temperature. Originally, they say you need 18 hours but I've found that it depends a lot the temperature. The last I made I left only 10 hours, as we're starting to get warmer nights now here in Spain.

When it's risen to a bit over double and starting to look wet on top, it's about ready. The dough is now very sticky and elastic as you will see when you pour it out on a well-floured table.

Spread more flour on top and on your fingers. Punch the dough a bit and stretch it and fold it over itself. Shape it into a ball. Place in a well floured proofing bowl and leave it covered with a tea towel for 1-2 hours.

Heat up your oven to 230º. The original recipe now call for using a dutch oven (cast iron stewing pot) which should be place in the oven so it's smoking hot. I'd just like to say I've made bread with out it which turned out fine as long as you remember to add a bowl of water into the oven to increase the humidity. Anyway, when the oven is hot, quickly transfer the bread to the pot. Score it on top with a sharp knife. Put a lid on and bake for 30 minutes with the lid on, then remove the lid and bake for another 15 minutes or when the internal temperature of the bread hits 93ºC (yes, you can use and oven thermometre for bread making as well).

Here's the final bread. The last crucial step is not to cut into the bread for the first 30 minutes. At this time the bread is still baking. What you can do to make this time g faster is put your ear close to the bread and enjoy the small crackling noises it makes when cooling down.