Baking Fail

[debitha]

No-Knead Bread:
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups warm water and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal. Put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.


I’ve known for years that I can’t bake, but there’s just something so tempting about the idea of fresh-baked bread. And when you see a recipe that looks pretty un-fuck-up-able, the little voice in the back of your head says, “But it’s so easy. You can cook, you can follow a recipe. What could go wrong?”

You see that? That bit there. “What could go wrong?” The phrase that is supposed to set the alarm bells ringing. But sometimes optimism overrides caution. You know what’s coming, right?

I didn’t take pictures from the beginning. You haven’t missed much, because it went pear-shaped pretty early on. I mixed up the ingredients. The recipe notes that the dough should be shaggy and sticky. Check. Awesome. Then leave it for 12-18 hours covered in plastic wrap. Cool.

Now. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Ah. See, the surface was dotted with bubbles after about two hours. The mixture had also doubled in size at that point, and looked pretty sloppy. I decided not to mess with the recipe, and left it the prescribed amount of time. Next morning the mixture looked the same. I was a bit concerned but decided to carry on in equal parts hope and… what’s the word for self-directed schadenfreude? There must be one. Anyway, step 2 – place the dough on a lightly floured work surface and fold over itself once or twice. Sounds easy right? Hah! Try folding this:



I sprinkled it with some extra flour until it was slightly less sloppy and sort of scooped it over itself a couple of times. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let it rest for 15 mins. When I took the plastic wrap back off it the entire top layer peeled off with it.

Gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. A ball. It is to laugh. Put it seam side down on a floured cotton cloth. I almost balked at this point, reluctant to sacrifice a perfectly good teatowel but what the hell. It’s all in a good cause, right? Seam side down. That’s a good one.

At this point I estimate that I have lost about a quarter of the mix to being stuck to the bowl, my hands and the benchtop, and have added at least another cup of flour along the way.



This is just what I’ve scraped off the bench:



Let it rise for a couple of hours. I don't know. Does this look risen to you?



Heat oven and pot, drop dough in. Super. Oh hey! When I said it stuck to everything? That’s what I’m talking about:



It smelled good as it cooked, and it looks good, but it feels quite hard. It’s quite dark coloured and rather like ciabatta in terms of texture. Edible though, which is the main thing, I guess.





This is what it's supposed to look like. The recipe is American, and I know American cup measures are a little smaller, but since the flour:water ratio is the same that shouldn't affect it, should it? It should just make a litte more bread. Right? Right?

In other news, I have soaked the teatowel, and it looks like it might recover.