Bittman's No-Knead bread vs. Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day [moved from Boston board]

[galleygirl]

Oooh, ooh, where?
Oh, I forgot, I'm never going to buy bread again, now that I make the St.Mark Bittman No-Knead Bread...

[NOTE: This digression about making your own bread was moved from a thread on the Boston board at http://www.chowhound.com/topics/512575 -- THE CHOWHOUND TEAM ]

[yumyum]

You are the 5th person I've heard say that about the no-knead. This month's Cooks Illustrated has a side by side comparison with St.Bittman's bread and another no-knead version. I can send you a copy if you like.

[Aromatherapy]

Which won?

[yumyum]

Bittman's. Already put the article in the mail to GG, but the other one was by the author of "Daily bread in 10 minutes" or some such title.

[greygarious]

I subscribe to CI - the issue with the no-knead recipe was last year. I looked in both the March/April and May/June 2008 issues and don't see the comparison article. Was is a different mag?

[yumyum]

Yep -- I was "mis-remembering" -- it was featured in The Week, a news from all over digest-type magazine I get. I forget the original source, and as I said, the article is already winging over to GG. I bet you could google it.

[galleygirl]

I've been curious about the Artisan Bread in 5-Minutes a Day book, too...
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/483709

But I may have enough problem with the Bittman bread, which has been amazing each time I've made it...

[yumyum]

That's the other one, yep.

[nfo]

The 5 minutes method is easy and convenient, and makes better bread than my grocery store's (Wilson Farms), but not as good as pricier local bakeries' (Iggy's, which I find expensive but good).

p.s. I'm not sure why my post got deleted when its purpose was to reframe this discussion in the context of local chow - is this okay??

[galleygirl]

I think the wonderful thing about the No Knead recipe, a la Bittman, is, that if properly done, it resembles nothing so much as the half basket Francese, or the huge restaurant size Francese, from Iggy's, which is my favorite Boston bread.

[teresacooks]

I have become an artisanbreadin5 devotee since Christmas. I can't recommend it highly enough. The Regular bread is great, the semolina is fantastic, the rye is great. I really, really love this method and the recipes. . . oh, also the brioche makes the best sticky buns. .

[galleygirl]

So, do you think you need the book to really do it right?
Yumyum sent me the article with the basic recipe, (Thanks, YY!), but it doesn't address the whole 5 Minute a Day concept, just how you can make dough once, and keep it in the fridge for a week...I thought maybe you fed it, or something....

[yumyum]

Reminds me of a line from a Bourdain book .. 'time to feed the b*tch."

The subject was of course the dough's "mother" (a tiny bit of the original dough kept aside when baking) which had to be fed to keep alive.

[galleygirl]

Exactly, which was what I thought the 5 Minutes a Day would be...
This article, from the NYT, is pretty much the comparison article Yumyum sent me...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/din...
It explains the division that gets them the 5 Minutes a day...Now, the thing that makes a difference is that you have to do the pan of water on the bottom of the oven, called an "ovenspring", that does indeed give a nice crust. Tho I am totally smitten with the Bittman Recipe, I may try this, just to see. Anthing that requires no kneading...Of course, I don't think there's room in my fridge for a big bucket of dough, between the kombucha batches, and food samples...sigh...

[Father Kitchen]

Either bread can be baked in a covered container, as can a well-kneaded loaf. And you can get very good flavor by using the Lahey no-knead approach with a few tablespoons of natural-leaven (sourdough) starter in place of the yeast. All kinds of permutations of these techniques are possible.

[galleygirl]

FK, yours was the quintessential post on the Bittman bread that I downloaded, and sent to lots of friends. Perfectly encapsulated all the variations, after watching the Youtube video, reading the initial article, and pulling in all the info from various posts....It's the Bittman No-Knead Bread Lexicon!

[Father Kitchen]

Thanks for the kudos. I'm still learning.

[pamiam]

If you bake the 5-minute artisan bread in the dutch oven, would you do 15 minutes with the lid on and 15 off?

[Father Kitchen]

The general idea with covered bakers is to have a moist atmosphere at the beginning of the bake, during the oven spring phase while the crumb is expanding, and then to uncover the baker for a dry atmosphere for the last part of the bake. I would probably keep it covered for 20 minutes, simply because I am used to baking larger loaves that take 35 to 40 minutes to bake. If the loaf is smaller, 15 minutes might be fine.