No Knead, Whole Wheat, English Muffin Batter Bread

I love my no-knead breads.  I love my kneaded breads, too, of course, but there are times, especially in the mornings, when I just want to get a dough in the oven without a lot of fuss and bother, and have a result that is beautiful, hearty, full of glory, grins.

My Sweetie-Pie surprised me a while back with a gorgeous bouquet of lilies, for no reason, just because he saw something beautiful and he thought of me.  How sweetie-pie is that?!  I'm telling you.  So, of course I had to bake him something that he particularly likes, whole wheat bread.

I'm an early morning riser, he tends to be a sleepyhead so it's no effort for me to have this ready and cooling by the time he finally makes it out to the kitchen.  Usually it's the aroma of something wonderful that awakens him and I see him standing there rubbing his eyes with his knuckles, sniffing the air, and mumbling, "What is that wonderful smell?"  Too cute sometimes.


NO KNEAD, WHOLE WHEAT, ENGLISH MUFFIN BATTER BREAD

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tablespoons whole wheat gluten (optional but gives a higher rise)
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
1 tablespoon yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup milk
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Cornmeal, for sprinkling the pan

Lightly grease an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pan with cooking spray or grease with shortening. Roll and shake the cornmeal around the sides and bottom of the pan.  Shake out any excess. Set pan aside.

In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flours, vital wheat gluten flour (if using), brown sugar, yeast, salt, and baking soda.

Combine the milk, water, and oil and gently heat until the liquid reaches the temperature directed by the yeast manufacturer, usually between 110*-120* Fahrenheit, but check package for manufacturer's recommendations. Stir the liquid together well before taking the temperature, and for best results, use an insta-read or digital read thermometer.  If you don't have one, temperature should be pleasantly warm but not hot.

Pour the liquid over the dry ingredients, then beat the mixture on high speed for one minute. The dough will be very soft, somewhat sticky, and moist, kind of goopy. Transfer the dough to the prepared pan, then gently stretch it with your impeccably clean hands to make it as even as possible.

Cover lightly with plastic wrap sprayed with cooking spray or a clean kitchen towel, in a warm, draft-free place, until the dough just barely rises over the top rim of the pan, about 1 hour, depending upon the temperature of your kitchen. (Alternatively, you can place the loaf in your refrigerator to rise overnight. Let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes prior to baking.) Towards the end of the bread’s rise time, place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat oven to 400* Fahrenheit.

Once dough has risen, remove the plastic wrap and bake for 22 to 27 minutes, until it is golden brown and the interior temperature registers 185*-190* Fahrenheit, or sounds hollow when given a good thump with the back of  your knuckle. Check the dough at the 15-minute mark—if it's browning too quickly, lightly tent the pan with foil, then continue baking until the bread is done.

Remove the bread from the oven and let stand for 5 minutes in the baking pan. Gently turn the bread out from the pan and place on a cooling rack. Allow bread to cool completely before slicing.

NOTE: I live in the desert, my kitchen is always warm and almost always no humidity, grins. Cooling a kitchen to 75* Fahrenheit is a lot different than heating it, grins.  My flours are parched! There was not nearly enough liquid so I ended up adding close to another 1/4 cup of lukewarm water.  The rising time for my dough was only about 40 minutes.

Easiest Yet No Knead Italian Bread

I have so many friends who tell me they are afraid of trying to make bread because they're afraid of yeast, and I say, "I hear you."  It is intimidating and it does take some skill and experience but it's not impossible.  I don't think there's many of us whose first attempts weren't less than stellar.  My first attempt at white bread resulted in a beautiful golden mass that needed a chain saw to cut through it.  Well, that's an exaggeration, maybe a hacksaw.  No kidding.  My husband took it down to the trash bin below and I heard the resounding clank all the way up to our second-story apartment, windows and doors closed, over city traffic.  Yep, that was me.  I can still remember the ringing.  It was a good laugh but not good bread.  It was also good experience and I tried again.  And again.  And then I got it. That's what I'm doing with tortilla making, and that's not even a yeasted bread!

This bread is virtually goof proof.  I can't think of a way you can mess it up, unless you don't let it rise long enough or the water you use in the batter is too hot and you kill the yeast or you overhandle it when you put it on the pan for baking and you lose some of the holey-ness.  There's no worry about kneading it to a smooth ball, too much water, not enough water, too little flour, too much flour, folding and rolling.  Just mix and plop mostly.

I've made this so many times over the years I've memorized the simple recipe, but simple doesn't equate with flavorless.  Oh. My. Word.  The long slow rise develops the yeasty flavor, combined with a beautiful golden crust on the outside, tender on the inside and you're in bread heaven.  If you're a rustic, holey bread person, this will warm your heart and satisfy your belly.

I've toasted it, made sandwiches with it, eaten it slathered with thick pats of butter.  It's good alongside soup, salad, or anywhere a good artisan type bread rounds out a meal.  Bread here lasts maybe three days. I've shared loaves with a friend who freezes half a loaf and he says it thaws well and is just as good as fresh.  So, that's good to know.  Here, we tend to eat it almost as fast as I make it, grins.

NO KNEAD ITALIAN BREAD

4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon yeast
2 cups of warm water 

Oven-proof baking dish or casserole dish with 2-3 cups of hot water to be used while baking bread 

Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl and add the 2 cups of warm water (about 105-115 degrees Fahrenheit). Stir the mixture.  You will have a gloopy, sticky mass.  It's okay; that's perfect!

Cover the bowl with a cloth or plastic wrap (not allowing it to touch the dough because the dough is going to rise).  Let sit in warm place about 4 hours, until double in volume.  The surface will have bubbles about 1/4 inch in diameter. 

Somewhere in this time frame, preheat your oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit.  Put the casserole dish with the 2-3 cups of hot water on a bottom rack and allow to heat with the oven.  You're trying to create a steamy, moist environment for the bread to bake.

Dump your dough onto a well-floured surface, covering the outside of the dough with flour as it is still gloopy and sticky.  Handle the dough as little as possible as you're trying not to burst the bubbles, and shape into desired shape.  A little stretching and pulling and patting into a log shape and you're good.  A pastry cloth is handy for rolling the dough onto your baking sheet.  If you've floured the outside of the dough well, you can just roll the dough off the pastry cloth onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.  If you don't use parchment, grease the baking sheet well.

Once the dough is on the baking sheet, put it into oven rack that is set at the mid-point.  (Be careful of the steam as you open the oven door.  It's going to come rushing out at your face.)

Bake for 35-45 minutes, or until the crust is a deep golden brown and bread sounds hollow when thumped with the back of your forefinger knuckle.

COOK'S NOTES:  I've made this enough times to where I can skip the step about putting it onto a well-floured surface and shaping.  I now just generously sprinkle the dough with flour, scraping down the side of the bowl to flour the sides, line a jelly roll pan with parchment paper, flour that well, and scrape my dough out into the pan and shape it there. It does get sticky and can be a little tricky because it wants to stick to the parchment, but nowadays I'm about not having one more thing to clean.

Now the directions say to let rise in a warm place for 4 hours and let me add a thought to that. I live in Arizona and most times of the year we are cooling our house to 75 degrees Fahrenheit.  Every place is a warm place in my kitchen.  Four hours of rising time is too long here so I start checking it after 3 hours or so, and more often than not, the dough just needs another half hour or so, during which time I preheat the oven.  When I lived in New Hampshire where in the dead of winter we heated our house to just 70, well, that was a whole 'nother story.  I put a bowl of warm water in an oven that had been ever so briefly heated to the lowest possible oven temperature and turned off.  Leave the oven door open, put the hot water on the lowest rack, turn on the oven light, and put the covered dough on a rack above that.  Sometimes I had to change the hot water a couple of times to make sure that the air was still warm.  Drafty old New England farmhouses, grins.

If you're going to let your dough rise in the oven, remove it before preheating it to 500.

Oh, one last thought.  That water that you use as you bake the bread is going to be hot, hot, hot.  I let it sit there after I take the bread out and allow it to cool down before handling.  One splash and you're going to get burnt, uh, speaking from experience.

No Knead English Muffin Batter Bread

No Knead English Muffin Batter Bread

If you're new to baking and just a little timid of working with yeast, this is a bread I highly recommend starting with.  There's no kneading, a single rise, no fussy shaping, and the results far outweigh the effort.  This bread is toothsome and yeasty and oh so delicious and makes the crunchiest toast.

NO-KNEAD, ENGLISH MUFFIN BATTER BREAD
Makes 2 loaves

5-1/2 cups all-purpose flour  (more or less) (divided)

2 tablespoons active dry yeast (yes, tablespoons, not teaspoons) 

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups milk

1/2 cup water 

Cornmeal for sprinkling inside baking pans and on top of loaves

Start by greasing two 8" x 4" baking loaves and sprinkling enough cornmeal inside and tipping and rotating the pan to leave a light coating on the sides and bottoms of the pans. Lightly tap out any excess.

In a large bowl, combine 3 cups of flour, yeast, sugar, salt and baking soda.  Give it a good stir.  

Heat milk and water to a temperature that falls between 120 to 130 degrees Fahrenheit.

Pour liquids into the dry mixture and stir; what you should have is something that is about as thick as pancake batter.  Add additional flour as needed.  (See notes below)

Divide the dough between the two pans. Stretch the dough to fit the pan.  Sprinkle with a little corn meal and allow to rise in a warm place about 45 minutes or until the dough has risen about 1/4 inch over the edge of the pan.

Depending on how fast your dough is rising and how long it takes your oven to preheat, somewhere during this time, preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 minutes, or until when thumbed with a knuckle it sounds hollow.

Let cool in pan for about 10 minutes and then remove from pan and allow to finish cooling on rack.

COOKS NOTES:  Now you're going to have to use some judgment here.  Recipe says more or less 5 1/2 cups flour.  I can tell you depending on the brand of flour, the age, if it's spring or winter wheat, if it's summer or the winter, the alignment of the stars and if the day of the week you're making this has a "y" in it, you're going to need some judgment on how much additional flour to add.  I add a half a cup at a time and give it a stir until I end up with something that is gloopy (is that a baking term?), and stretchy.  You may not need the full amount; you may need to add a bit more.  This time I only needed 5 cups of flour and it was absolutely fine.

Recipe says to allow dough to rise for 45 minutes.  Well, it's the beginning of September, I live in Arizona, the sun is beating down on us, and my house is cooled to 75 degrees, grins, so needless to say 45 minutes of rising time is out of the question.  I checked at 35 minutes, and the dough was at the near perfect point.  It only takes a few short minutes to heat the oven, and we were good to go.

Mmm, homemade English muffin batter bread for breakfast!