The big reason that no-knead bread appealed to me is that I find the traditional way of kneading, pressing the dough and folding it, to be really tiring. Fortunately, by the time I decided that I needed to knead my breads after all, I had discovered other ways to knead the dough.
I was fascinated by “French fold” (as they call it on The Fresh Loaf), as demonstrated here by Richard Bertinet. He picks up a shaggy mass of dough, slaps it down, and turns it into silky, springy dough. It looks like magic, and like magic, it’s hard to see what’s he’s doing. So I checked out Dough and Crust and watch both included DVDs. While Dough rings variations on five basic recipes, Crust mainly focuses on the all-important sourdough, as well as sweet breads. I also prefer Crust because it measures the ingredients in metric weights.
Anyway, here is my first attempt to bake the sourdough recipe from Crust. I misunderstood the proportions and the dough was so wet, it was practically paste. I knew I was in trouble, but I reminded myself of the things I’m learning about bread. As the dough spattered on the board, I told myself, Don’t add any flour. As it came up goopy over and over again, I told myself, you have to believe it will work. As I beat the crap out of that dough, and let it rest, and beat it up some more, I told myself, it’s very hard to overwork a dough by hand.
Somewhere along the way, I started to think I knew what I was doing, because the dough did become elastic. It never grew silky, but it did get springy. It held its shape. It even sprang up in the oven. It worked!
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