Hacker News Reader

Comment by telesilla | Hacker News Reader

We've started making bread every night for the next day, and I've heard many of my friends are doing this. It's better than what we get in the local bakeries (we don't live in France) and have already discussed continuing to bake now that we figured out some easy tricks. We started here : https://andyljones.com/posts/bread.html

View on HN

Conversely, just saw this twitter post by @gloomfather: "Oh dude yeah you gotta try baking your own bread in quarantine. It takes 14 hours to do right and it’s boring as shit, but the results are often quite disappointing." :)

The bread I make takes about 20 minutes of work total, including measuring out the ingredients and cleaning up afterwards.

You do have to wait overnight for the dough to rise, but you don't have to do any kneading.

The results taste about 10x better than any other bread I've ever had in my life.

Would you share this no-knead recipe?

Here you go, Lean Bread from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day, a fantastic book I heartily recommend:

http://dpaste.com/1JH41V3

Recipe modifications and tips:

- I use a cast iron bread pan -- it really makes a difference

- I prefer to use a good quality bread flour, like King Arthur. Haven't had luck with all-purpose flour.

- I do everything in a single bowl, up to the point that the dough is transferred to the bread pan

- I keep the oven at 450 degrees F throughout, and only start it 15 minutes before baking.. works well enough for me

- I use the "3/4 of original" ingredients in the recipe to make one single loaf of bread, which fits perfectly in my bread pan

- I tend to apply coconut oil to the top of the bread half-way through baking, rather than before baking. It's a lot easier to apply coconut oil when it's melted, which it'll readily do atop hot bread, so this is the easiest way to do it for me. But I still oil the inside of the bread pan beforehand as usual.

- I like to use instant yeast, so I can mix it directly in to the flour without needing the extra step of activation. It's worked great for me.

- Before adding the yeast, I mix the salt thoroughly in to the flour. Yeast should not be dumped directly on a pile of salt as that could kill it. Also, don't let the water you add get too hot, as that can also kill the yeast. I make the water luke-warm to slightly warm and that's resulted in a big rise in the dough for me.

Would it be possible to get an updated recipe link? I was hoping to try this, but it looks like the paste has expired. Thanks!

This is a great bread, btw.

I use a simpler version, but very similar.

I like to roll it (or just coat the bottom) in seeds or cornmeal to prevent sticking, rather than dealing with parchment, oil, etc.

This is an older post of mine, which has a video and images to show you what things look like at various steps

https://blog.steve.fi/this_is_mostly_how_i_make_bread.html

I follow this one every few weeks. I put a bit more salt than he recommends. This is the most no-fuss recipe I've encountered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX_6l2bmvQI

Yup. This is the one I followed and the results are perfect. He also has a baguette recipe which is quite similar which comes out just right too.

Also, if you are running out of yeast (like I did) you can just save some of the dough and learn how to feed the culture with flour and water daily.

Also if the crust comes out too crunchy, I just bake it at a lower temp and longer.

https://www.markbittman.com/recipes-1/no-knead-bread

I've baked seven loaves of sourdough since quarantine started. I made my starter by mixing flour and water. The first two were utter rubbish, the next two were edible, and the most recent one has been rather good - much better than what my parents' bread machine would put out.

I've never baked so much as a cookie, in my life before. Like any skill, baking bread simply requires practice... And a scientific approach, where you vary one parameter at a time, until you figure out something that works.

I own exactly two things that have made this process easier. A kitchen scale, for exact weighing (Because all bread recipes measure in grams, not cups...) - and an oven thermometer, because my oven is a lying, slanderous ne'er-do-well, and is never accurate about its temperature.

It does not take 14 hours to do. It takes about 30 minutes of up-front work in the morning, and then about 30 minutes of attention interspersed throughout the day.

And it's not like I have better things I could be doing.

I just had a similar experience. But I just had to remember that like ~literally almost everything I have ever attempted~, the important thing was that I reviewed what I did wrong (misread the amount of yeast and let it alone too long for the second rise), correct it, and try again. Now I am making delicious bread!

There is very little work just a lot of waiting. I also bake the Ken Forkish recipe. It is a no-kneed bread recipe.

The trick I figured out is to invest in a danish dough whisk - then I whisk it in the bowl instead of pinching. I also let the dough rise over night in the same bowl. Also - don't ignore the instructions to heat the dutch oven before baking. This is what prevents the bread from sticking.

That really made the rounds but anyone who has done it knows it's nonsense.

Fresh bread can take as little as 20 minutes of work and tastes amazing.

The only valid complaint is it doesn't last long.

A very on-brand comment from that fellow. But if you not doing it to pass the time, I'd suggest using a bread machine!

If you do it the no-knead way, making bread in the oven is less work than a bread machine and less noisy. Less clean up, and better bread.

No-knead bread needs high-hydration dough, which is fashionable nowadays but not to everybody's preference. If you prefer something like normal sandwich bread then a bread machine will make it for you.

Making bread with extremely limited time commitment involves 6 steps that each are very quick, but have to be spaced out correctly.

1. Use a mixer to mix flour (measured by weight), salt, yeast, water for 10 minutes.

2. Let sit for 4 hours

3. Kneed for 5 minutes

4. Rest for 30 minutes in a cold Dutch oven while you preheat to 425

5. Put it in the oven for 30 minutes

6. Remove lid and Lower temp to 375 and weight about 20 more minutes until bread gets to 200 degrees.

You do that. It’s 15 minutes worth of work, but you have to be home which makes it optimal for wfh days. You will get awesome results every time

I use a similar technique, but I throw it on a pizza stone for 45 minutes in total with a cup of water evaporating from a heated oven tray underneath the stone to provide steam.

Making bread yourself is incredibly delicious, easy to do, and takes no time at all.

Edit: I also set my oven to 510 Fahrenheit to get a consistent bake, but that may be a quirk of my particular oven.

By using a Dutch oven you get a more consistent temp since it holds the heat like a stone, and doesn’t let moisture evaporate until you take the lid off.

So yeah, the variations make sense

Go sourdough. Avoid the need to purchase yeast. It's really no more difficult, just a slower rise. Also you don't need to knead, just stretch and fold six or seven times as it bulk ferments.

In times like these I'd highly recommend getting starter from someone who already has some. Starting your own won't always yield a high-powered reliable one. I've started many over the years, but never realized that all of them were weak until I got some starter from a cafe in town. I cannot recommend enough using an established proven starter.

You also don't need to stretch and fold, you can just knead (or not even do that if you have enough gluten development from the autolyse).

I point this out because I'm pretty sure that different techniques will suit some people better than others. Personally I'm happy to do 10 minutes of kneading at the start, but find it burdeonsome to go back and do stretch-and-fold every half an hour (or whatever schedule you're following). Similarly I've seen people claim that the only correct way to keep a sourdough starter is to feed it small amounts of flour and water multiple times a day. If I had to do that I'd never remember and so never bake bread again; the results from keeping the starter in the fridge and refreshing it 12-24 hours before baking are good enough for me, and it's a schedule I can stick to.

Sourdough seems to be one of those activities where there are a lot of people who have a way that works for them and generalise out to that being the one correct way to do things. Whilst there are definitely things that work better and things that don't work so well, the important thing is to find a method that you're able to reliably follow and that gives results you're happy with.

>from someone who already has some

Not really possible right now =)

I've been doing a no knead recipe that takes ~3 hours, and it comes out great. If you're making bread every day, it might save you some time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0t8ZAhb8lQ

Do you eat an entire loaf a day? I like making bread sometimes but my family can't eat it quickly enough before it goes stale.

I've baked bread for my family (2+3) for years, but our consumption is very bursty. Particularly if we haven't had bread for a few days, we can eat a loaf in a day, but then we'll be sick of it and there will be a lull.

I invested in a nice set of aluminum Nordic Ware pans a while back, so I do five loaves at once, and probably bake ~1.5–2 times per month. Toast for breakfast can easily knock out half a loaf, and it's way more economical for everyone to have a slice or two of homemade bread than to eat dried cereal and polish off a box a day.

With working from home, I've been keeping my sourdough alive on the counter (rather than storing it in the fridge), and although I haven't baked any _loaves_, I've done a lot of other bready things with it over the last few weeks— pizza crusts twice, cinnamon rolls once, lunch buns twice, a focaccia one day. It's been great!

We used to (family of five) go through a loaf a day; we'd buy it in bulk in the weekend and freeze it.

Mind you my dad would take like six or eight sandwiches to work every day (metalworker). And we're a sandwich-heavy culture.

> before it goes stale

Not a problem! Time for bread pudding or a strata.

Before that even, you can make toast and / or french toast with it. And with the leftovers, dry it out in the oven and cube it to make croutons for in soup and salads. My girlfriend puts a collection of herbs and spices on them too, dunno what though. She does put the bag in the freezer then, but since it's dry it doesn't really need to be defrosted.

I’ll also break it into pieces, let it dry and dip in soups or make French onion soup out of it.

There's a limit on how much carbohydrates we can reasonably consume.

That's quitter talk.

More seriously, a loaf every day does seem a bit much unless you have a large family, are making small loaves, or have a strange diet. I was just speaking to the bit I quoted. If you're making a loaf a week and can keep it dry, you can do use the stale leftovers whenever you've accumulated enough of them.

This is why I'm a transhumanist.

Freeze it, then toast it.

> ...my family can't eat it quickly enough before it goes stale.

You're obviously not making enough french toast.

Slice it before it gets too hard, then fry in olive oil or make French toast.

The great thing about making your own bread is that as long as you have salt, yeast, flour, water, and an oven, you can fit your bread recipe to the equipment that you have. Getting a great loaf at home takes some practice (my first loaf came out like a biscuit, it was horrible). But after a few repetitions you can get pretty consistently good results.

I'm not as much of a sourdough person, and I don't have a dough machine or stand mixer, but I have a hand-kneaded recipe that I like. I don't have a dutch oven, so I use a stockpot instead. And so on. There's tons of info online, and it gets easy and more consistent with practice.

I've been baking bread every weekend, or two, for over a year now. Currently in Helsinki my local shops have run out of flour, and dried yeast, but I'm still good for now, as I have a surplus of flour and I started making my own sourdough starter.

Sourdough starters are pretty easy to create, but I usually make one then go back to dried yeast after a few months. I suspect the batch I'm using at the moment will last longer than most:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-R-kkphHPP/

Where are you finding flour? The stores around here have been sold out for weeks now.

I just got some from Walmart, which took exactly a week to arrive. Not bad under the circumstances. If what you're looking for is out of stock, just keep checking it, they seem to be restocking quickly enough.

Same here. I tried one of the mills, but they had closed their online store due to increased demand.

We ended up getting some from a baking school that had been forced to close.

Good Christ, how much bread do you eat? We make like one loaf a week.

probably just small loaves. so they always have nice fresh bread...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com