It's a cold day, so I think I will bake some bread today

Car as a proofing box

@MLE_online THINNER

@est I'm going to read that pretty soon

@MLE_online i read it when i was in middle school. not since. but i still have it on the shelf.

i wonder how it holds up.

probably not well!

@est in this age of ozempic, who can sympathize with a man who is losing weight against his will!

@MLE_online i'll probably have to try that ozempic thing someday. i'm far too squishy for my own good.

@jmorris What makes you think such a thing!

The blob rests and waits

The bread

I still haven't gotten any no-knead bread recipe to rise as much as it should, but this is taller than most of my attempts.

How does anyone get their no-knead bread to be a nice round ball when the dough always turns out to be so gooey?

@MLE_online like this? sorry, i didnt take the picture until i cut into it. i just dust with flour until is less sticky so i can handle it and kinda fold the sides under to help pull into a ball. this wasnt technically no knead but autolyze for 40 min, then add salt and run in my mixer for about 7 minutes. Dough rose in the fridge for 36 hours, then let it warm back up, form into a ball and let it rise again a bit more under a towel until i put it in the oven.

@johne I dusted mine but even after pulling it into a taut ball, it slowly flattened out during the second rise

@MLE_online this was helpful in understanding the mechanics of shaping a boule and the intent to create tension https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bIb8fC9BdWs

@dizzy thank you!

@MLE_online Maybe you need more yeast? For 400 grams of flour I usually use about 14gm of instant yeast. And this time I upped my salt a little (also) to 14 gm. The bread I made this morning was of similar hydration to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-knead_bread I hope I'm not muddying the waters for you as again, what I made was technically not no-knead.

@johne it's not that it doesn't rise. It gets very puffy, but the dough is just so fluid that he wants to spread out as it expands more than it wants to climb upwards

@MLE_online I am by no means an expert, but my thought is that without enough gluten structure, the dough can’t hold onto the generated gas.

@johne I suppose it could be that but again the dough rises and is full of bubbles but it just spreads out. I don't know how to fix that

Nice and chewy. Good crumb. Tasty

@MLE_online @dizzy yeah could be something like this. The flip side of no-knead is often they need a bit more work to get into a taut boulle. In general I find they need a little more work than a lot of recipes imply. It's not much, but it's also not "just plop it out and shape it".

If you still aren't happy with the structure, could look at using a higher gluten/protein flour (or mixing something like durum in).

@cda @dizzy I've been moving towards using bread flour instead of all-purpose flour even though most of the recipes say you can use all-purpose. I feel like all purpose can't really be up to this task

@MLE_online @cda yes to bread flour given higher protein and thus gluten. Do you also use a steam method for oven spring to get it rising? Or using a dutch oven which replicates the same?

@dizzy @cda I use a Dutch oven

@MLE_online light and fluffy like a three minute conversation at a martini party

@smellsofbikes did you try that other zopf recipe yet?

@MLE_online This is that, with no egg on top. It's good! I like it a lot.

@smellsofbikes excellent

@MLE_online That's beautiful!

@HackAWeek it's tasty too!

@MLE_online play with less water. For my go-to recipe I use about 20g less than the recipe calls for.

@tsherrygeo thanks!