Homemade Bread When There’s No Time to Make Bread

One of the perks of being in graduate school is that I basically work from home most days, so if I want to take a break in the middle of the afternoon to knead bagel dough until there’s enough gluten to make a baker’s windowpane, I usually can. But I know that’s a luxury not everyone has, and sometimes even I can’t seem to fit all that kneading in. As much as I might like to live by some sort of mantra like, “If I’m too busy to knead bread for 15 minutes, I’m too busy,” sometimes, like it or not, busy just happens.  

However, I also have this yeast creature named Ezekiel, and if I don’t bake with him at least once every  two weeks (and preferably every week—keeps him more active), he will eventually suffocate in his own excrement. That may be one of the biggest deterrents for people who might otherwise be interested in creating and maintaining their own starters—even if you’re an avid baker, a sourdough starter represents a kind of commitment. Whether or not you’re type to get emotionally invested in your fermenting flour paste, the whole endeavor is likely to seem like a waste of time and food if you’re just going to end up killing the stupid thing in a month or two anyhow.

However, thanks to the no-knead method popularized by Jim Lahey of Sullivan Bakery and Mark Bittman of the NYTimes, the inevitability of weeks when you will be too busy to knead a loaf of bread shouldn’t stop anyone from having a starter. Honestly, no-knead bread is probably the only reason Ezekiel is still alive. There are some culinary justifications for the no-knead method too—if you don’t have to knead a dough, it can be stickier and that increased moisture content is one way of producing a crackling “artisan bread” crust. Also, the long, slow rise produces the big pockets of air and uneven crumb people have come to expect and desire from “rustic” breads like ciabatta. But the best part by far is being able to make homemade bread with about as much time and effort as it takes to boil an egg.*

I’ll post my sourdough-risen adaptation of the classic crusty Dutch Oven-baked boule everyone loves eventually. But I think the best testament to the versatility and ease of the no-knead method is no-knead pizza.

The Four Keys to Great Pizza Crust

1) Gluten 

Pizza is even more reliant on gluten than most yeast breads. Without a lot of gluten, the crust will tear before you can stretch it thin enough to be a crust instead of something more like focaccia. Lots of gluten is also what makes pizza crusts chewier than normal bread—usually, you want something closer in texture to a bagel than sandwich bread. Normally, you produce gluten by kneading the dough for a long time, but the no-knead method uses a very long rise instead, which facilitates gluten production without any effort on your part. Time basically does the kneading for you.

However, you do need to use a high-protein flour to give time the raw material to work with. If you substitute all-purpose flour, the crust will probably tear when you try to shape it. If you don’t want to buy bread flour because you’re afraid you’ll never 5 lbs of it, but you do have access to a “natural foods” store, you can use vital wheat gluten to increase the protein content of regular or low-gluten flour—whisk 1 T. vital wheat gluten per cup of all-purpose flour or 2 T. per cup of whole wheat or cake flour into the dry ingredients before combining them with the wet ingredients.

2) Olive Oil

The traditional no-knead dough recipe contains no fat at all, like a baguette dough, but pizza dough usually contains at least a little fat both for suppleness and for flavor. So instead of using Jim Lahey’s recipe for no-knead pizza dough, I use the “Olive Oil Dough Master Version” from the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, adapted to work with my 100% hydration sourdough starter (a 1:1 combination of flour and water by volume). Any kind of oil will work, but I think my favorite thing about this dough is that you can smell and taste the olive oil in the final product. 

3) Refrigeration

Most pizzerias refrigerate their crusts for a minimum of 24 hours. The cold slows the yeast activity  down and enables even more gluten development and a lot of flavor development, which is largely due to the yeast byproducts. You can bake the crust without refrigerating it, and it will turn out okay; however, it will be way better after at least one and up to ten days in the refrigerator. While that might be a bummer for instant gratification-seekers, it actually makes this a super convenient meal. You can throw the dough together one day and then after the long rise, divide it into individual pizza-sized amounts and store them in separate ziptop bags in the refrigerator for use basically anytime in the next two weeks.

Then, whenever you want pizza, all you have to do is roll it out, top it, and bake it. Even if you grate the cheese by hand and the toppings you want to use take some prep work—like cooking bacon and sautéing some sliced onion in the rendered fat or chopping up a pear or bell pepper—you can do that in the time it takes the oven to preheat. Baking only takes 15 minutes, and if you’re of the mind that pizza alone isn’t a complete and balanced meal, you can use that to throw together a salad or cut up and steam a head of broccoli. If you use already-prepped toppings like shredded cheese, canned artichokes, and pre-sliced olives or chopped up leftovers, the whole process takes less than 20 minutes of active time. Either way, your pizza will be done in less time than it takes to get delivery.

4) Hot Oven & Stone

While the exact temperature may vary by oven, which you’ll only figure out by experimenting, you can narrow your search to 400F+. A super-hot oven is what makes the yeast go crazy, producing those great big bubbles and crisping the top of the crust. For a crisp bottom crust, you need a preheated surface—ideally a baking tile or pizza stone, but a preheated baking sheet is better than nothing.

For my oven, 15 minutes at 500F is perfect—I get a soggy crust at both 450 or 550. You’d think it would just get crisper as the oven gets hotter (or at least I did), but when I tried it at 550F, after 12 or so minutes the top was starting to burn and the bottom wasn’t totally crisp, and got softer and limper as it cooled. At 450, the bottom would begin to burn by the time the cheese on top melted and despite that, never got totally crisp.

As I’ve mentioned before, you don’t have to drop $40 on something specifically marketed as a baking tile or pizza stone at Williams-Sonoma, you can use any unglazed quarry tile that will fit in your oven, which should be available at most home improvement stores for a couple of dollars (Alton Brown claims they cost $0.99 in the 2007 Good Eats episode “Flat is Beautiful” and katie k at the Fresh Loaf recommends asking for “saltillo tiles” which ran about $1.50 in Southern California in 2006).

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The primary difference between the kind of bread that you can buy in plastic bags for as little as $.99 a loaf at most supermarkets (exemplified, of course, by Wonderbread) and “artisan” breads that go for $5+ at bakeries isn’t actually the kind of yeast or flour or any special oils or add-ins. Usually, it’s the crust. And the key to the crackling, chewy crust that says “artisan” to most people is moisture.

When a loaf is exposed to the dry heat of the oven, a couple of processes are set in motion—the yeast start to go crazy and produce gas much more rapidly, which is what creates more holes in the dough (sometimes called “oven spring”), and the starches begin to gelatinize. In a regular, dry oven, the starches on the outside gelatinize really quickly, which can retard the rise a bit and create a smooth exterior. Steam slows the gelatinization process for the crust, which changes the texture.

Bakeries usually achieve their result with special ovens that blast loaves with steam in the early stages of baking. The no-knead method popularized by the NYTimes achieves similar results with a wet dough and a preheated, covered pot, which creates a mini-sauna for the loaf. I use the no-knead method a lot, adapted for my sourdough starter, and it probably has the best reward/effort ratio of any recipe I use regularly—the only thing I can think of that would even compete is roasted garlic. But sometimes I want a shaped loaf with the same kind of crust—a baguette or something with an interesting slashing pattern. Those are hard to achieve if you’re just dumping a dough too wet to knead into super-hot pot.

Bittman makes it sound nigh-impossible to achieve bakery results in a home oven any other way:

I have tried brushing the dough with water (a hassle and ineffective); spraying it (almost as ineffective and requiring frequent attention); throwing ice cubes on the floor of the oven (not good for the oven, and not far from ineffective); and filling a pot with stones and preheating it, then pouring boiling water over the stones to create a wet sauna (quite effective but dangerous, physically challenging and space-consuming). I was discouraged from using La Cloche, a covered stoneware dish, by my long-standing disinclination to crowd my kitchen with inessential items that accomplish only one chore. I was discouraged from buying a $5,000 steam-injected oven by its price.

But I have a method that I think works pretty well. It’s somewhere between the La Cloche method and the pot of stones method—it does require specialized equipment, but a baking tile is far more flexible and affordable than a La Cloche. Alton Brown says you can use any “unglazed quarry stone” and according to this post at The Fresh Loaf, “saltillo tiles” that fit the bill were selling for $1.50 at Home Depots in Southern California in 2006. For the steam, I set a cast iron pot on the floor of the oven, and just after I slide the shaped loaves onto the baking tile, I pour 1/3 cup warm water from the tap into the pot and then quickly close the oven. Five minutes later, I pour another 1/3 cup water into the pot. None of which seems especially dangerous, expensive, space-consuming, or challenging, and gives me crusty loaves in whatever shape I please.

For these loaves, I used a basic baguette recipe, which I got from Brian’s grandmother. I had some whole wheat pastry flour and medium rye flour to use up, both of which are low-gluten flours, so I added a little vital wheat gluten, which you can get at most “natural food” retailers (it’s the primary ingredient in seitan). Gluten is the protein in wheat, which creates long stretchy chains when combined with water, and those capture the gas bubbles created by the yeast. If you use more than 1 cup low-gluten flour (which includes all-purpose wheat, whole wheat, and any kind of rye or spelt) you will definitely need to add gluten to get results that look like the pictures. I also threw in some flax meal, oats, and sunflower seeds.

A few days later, I was invited to a friends’ house later that evening and decided I wanted to take them some bread, but obviously it needed to happen fast, so I used packaged yeast. The dual recipes below the jump demonstrate the interchangeability of starter/instant yeast (I also explain how to substitute either in any recipe here). There are some slight differences—the sourdough version takes longer to rise and will contain more lactic acid which gives it a slightly more sour and “bready” flavor. Since the instant yeast version rises faster at room temperature, depending on when you slash it, the oven spring might not be as dramatic so the slashes will look deeper in the final loaf (like they do in the picture on the right at the top).  But either way, I think the result is lovely—a moist, chewy interior and crisp, shattering crust, great flavor and aroma.

These recipes are also completely flexible—you could use any combination of flours and add other seeds or nuts or dried fruits or grated cheeses or cooked alliums. You could shape it differently to make a baguette or a classic boule. If you can dream it, you can bake it.

Recipe and instructions, with pictures, below the jump. Read more

I mostly chalked up my seeming inability to make decent naan to my lack of a tandoori oven or any other means of emulating solar fusion in my kitchen.

Not that I didn't try. I'd crank the oven as high as it goes and preheat it forever with a baking stone inside seeming to absorb and radiate all the heat my kitchen could muster up. But my little circles of dough would just poof up like pitas, and brown modestly and taste, unsurprisingly, like pita bread. Which is fine and all, it's just nothing like the pillowy soft, flaky wedges of seared, blistering flatbread that's basically the best part of eating at Indian restaurants.

Every time I have naan like that, I'm reminded of the first time I ate in the Desi corridor on Devon Ave in Chicago with my friend Rachel. A minute or two after we sat down with plates loaded from the buffet, she started nodding as she chewed—not looking at anyone or anything, just: yes. Then she stopped eating for a minute, turned to me and said, "This bread is pretty awesome."

I finally achieved what I consider to be "pretty awesome" naan by baking it on the stovetop in a dutch oven. I'd tried that before—both in a normal nonstick skillet and in a dutch oven--but it just ended up underdone in spots, sometimes burning but not blistering, and chewy instead of pillowy. It was also always, for lack of a better way to describe it, too bready. Apparently the problem was that I was just too shy about letting the dutch oven get hot enough to melt my pastry brush into a solid nub of smoking black plastic. If you don't want to sacrifice a pastry brush to the cause, the traditional way to gauge whether it's hot enough or not is that the oil will be smoking, and not like a little modest smoking, full-on, disable-the-smoke-alarm-and-turn-on-any-fans-available smoking. My mistake, it turns out, had been turning the heat down when the oil started to smoke, thinking it would impart an unpleasant burnt flavor to anything cooked in it. I was obviously forgetting that naan often has a quite pleasant burnt flavor.

The recipe I sort-of used, which I found at Porcini Chronicles (and which they credit to Yamuna Devi's book The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking) was was also slightly different than the ones I'd tried before. If I'd actually looked at the recipes I've used before—not just for naan, but any bread I've ever made with my sourdough starter, I would have known right away that there was no way it was going to work as written. My starter is roughly equal parts flour and water by volume, so it's about the consistency of a thick pancake batter. The one they used must have been 90% water--or they just copied the amounts wrong. (Notes below about how to substitute for starter if you don't have one, and a post soon about how I cultivated mine).

To explain, the ratio of starter:flour for a typical, slightly sticky dough is 2:3. This recipe called for 1/2 cup starter and half cup yogurt for 3 cups of flour, or a liquid:dry ratio of roughly 1:3. Instead of thinking about that for the ten seconds or so it would have taken for me to figure that out, I just dumped all the ingredients into the bowl. Whee! I am so smart.

There was obviously too much flour. Scraps were flying out of the bowl as I mixed. I had doubled the recipe, so I checked again to make sure I hadn't done it wrong…and I hadn't. So, I just kept mixing and then started kneading it into a dough the best I could, but, I mean, the recipe actually said you could add flour if the dough was too sticky.

I did manage to get it to start to come together like a dough, but too sticky? It wasn't even sticky enough to keep the seeds in the dough—they were scattering all over the place. And it was so stiff it was almost impossible to knead.

There was a moment when I wondered if maybe this was the key to delicious, soft, flaky naan: a super stiff dough that only a real Indian grandma would know how to handle. Maybe, I thought, I should just go with the recipe no matter how crazy it seemed.

But the recipe was telling me two different things: on the one hand there were the amounts, on the other the suggestion that it might be sticky.

I choose sticky. I ripped a gap in the dough and poured some more sourdough starter into it. And I kneaded that in. And then I did that again. And a third time. I probably added another cup of starter, and none of the flour I'd left out. Eventually I had a supple, smooth dough.

Each time I added more starter, the ball would initially be a big sticky mess. Rolling up the stray nigella seeds, I felt like a giant with a tiny katamari. This, I thought, is not "a science." The whole idea that cooking is "an art" and baking "a science" relies on so many flawed assumptions: the idea that science can't be improvisational and cooking is, the idea that art isn't often extraordinarily, painstakingly precise, the idea that you can't just throw some flour and water and yeast together and come up with great bread.

So, I think the following is roughly what ended up in my dough, but if you're looking to recreate it, just aim for something dough-like, get a pan really, really hot, and don't get too caught up in the details.

Recipe: Sourdough Naan

• 1 c. sourdough starter*
• 5 T. ghee or vegetable oil, divided**
• 1/2 c. yogurt
• 2 1/2 c. bread flour
• 2 t. sugar
• 1/2 t. baking soda
• 1/2 t. baking powder***
• 1 1/2 t. kosher salt (1 t. reg)
• 1/2 t. kalonji/nigella/black onion seeds, or poppy seeds (optional)

Combine everything but 1 T. of the ghee or oil and knead until it forms a smooth, elastic dough (at least 6-8 minutes). Place in an oiled bowl, turn to coat, cover and let rise 4 hrs. or until a depression doesn't heal immediately.

Preheat a cast iron pot on high with the lid on. Add about 1/2 t. ghee or oil and spread around a little—I recommend a spatula rather than a pastry brush. The oil will smoke. You want it to smoke. You probably also want to use the kitchen exhaust fan if you have one.

Divide the dough into 6 pieces, and roll into a circle approximately 1/4" thick—you can roll them all first or roll each one as the others bake. Either way, keep the on deck balls/circles covered with plastic wrap so they don't dry out too much.

Remove the lid of the pot and drop the dough flat onto the bottom. Cover and bake for 30 seconds. Flip and bake 30 seconds more. Remove, and repeat with the remaining circles.

You could try baking it super hot too, but don't blame me if it comes out like pita.

I also threw half of the dough in an oiled zip-top bag and left it in the refrigerator for a week, removed it an hour before baking so it could warm to room temperature, and made another batch that was just as great. A little more sour, because my yeast were faithfully producing acid and alcohol the whole time, although slowly because of the cold temperature. You could probably let it go up to 10 days, or maybe more, which means you can make the dough anytime and have beautiful, fresh naan with very little immediate effort any night of the week.

*You can always substitute equal parts flour and water and some instant yeast. For 1 cup of starter, use about 2/3 cup flour, 2/3 cup water, and 1 t. yeast.

**Don't substitute butter or olive oil. The milk solids in the butter will burn and olive oil has a lower smoke point than vegetable oil.

***The original recipe called for 1 t. baking soda, but I've had too many bad experiences with my acids not being adequate, especially when doubling recipes so I used half baking powder. Chemical leavening isn't strictly necessary in yeast breads, but I think it's part of what made this recipe so soft and light. I nearly forgot it in a second batch I made—I had already started kneading, and as soon as I sprinkled the soda and powder on and kneaded it in I could feel the change in the dough. I imagine much of the chemical leavening is lost in the kneading, shaping, and rolling and in the long rise, but I'm sure there's still some left by the time you bake.