no knead bread

today (and last night) i made no knead bread. mine turned out awful. wondering what i did wrong, since others have had success with that bread.
first, i did not use bread flour. but my goopy dough was bubbly and stretchy this am so i thought it worked as it should have overnight.
then i put it into the towel to take a 2 hr nap (that was the recipes description). but since i have cats and wasn't sure if i had a towel that was completely hairless, i used parchment paper inside the towel. could that have been my mistake?
after baking, the bread had a lot of holes but the texture inside was sort of spongey like injera bread. anyone have any ideas what happened?

mcd2
  • Posted by: mcd2
  • October 1, 2011
  • 3614 views
  • 4 Comments

4 Comments

mcd2
mcd2 October 3, 2011
sfmiller, thanks for the help. my pan was 450 degrees for 30 minutes so that wasn't the problem. and the inside was not wet spongy but a weird dry shiny spongy-looked like the surface had been varnished sort of.. i cooked it long enough because there was actually one very dark-almost burned spot on the bottom-the inside was done all the way through. i just need to try again with fresh yeast and see how it looks the second time
boulangere, here's the website i used for the bread. http://steamykitchen.com/168-no-knead-bread-revisited.html do you know a better one?
sam1148, i don't mind the holes-i mentioned them to indicate that the yeast had worked and it looked like it "should"-except for the shiny surface.
oh,i just noticed that there is a reference to a previous fp about this. i'll try the nyt version and see what i get.
thanks for the help, one and all.
 
sfmiller
sfmiller October 1, 2011
In my experience, the wet, spongy texture you describe (and a relatively flat loaf) comes from overproofing in the last rise, an oven temp that's not high enough, or both.

Next time, get the bread into the pan just after it has doubled in bulk on the last rise. That may happen (and for me, usually does) in less than the full 2 hours. And make sure the oven has sufficiently preheated and the pan is screaming hot.
 
boulangere
boulangere October 1, 2011
Whose recipe are you using?
 
Sam1148
Sam1148 October 1, 2011
You'll get varied results for 'no kneed bread'. It's a rustic bread, sometimes you will have large holes. It comes out a bit different each time, depending on the flour used. humidity and resting times. (I cover mine with plastic wrap in a big stainless steel bowl and let it rest in the oven (turned off of course) until the final steps. If I remember correctly the classic "no kneed loaf" calls for AP flour. Not bread flour---which is denser and more spongy and won't puff up like you'd want.

For consistently use a gram weight scale to measure the flour and perhaps a softer flour for a loaf that rises to a better texture.
But, it will always have a rustic loaf with holes etc..which is part of the charm to me.

This "science" might help.
http://blog.khymos.org/page/3/
 
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