March 27, 2024 - 5:00am
Good book for overnight/multiday bread recipes?
With our schedules I typically don’t have time during the week for doing something that from start to finish takes several hours.
Are there any good books of recipes that require a reasonable block of time then have the dough sit at least overnight if not multiple days then a baking step?
This recipe is a good example of what I am talking about.
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/no-knead-crusty-white-bread-recipe
Thanks.
Share
Most naturally fermented doughs and doughs made with a biga can be refrigerated nearly anywhere in their cycle, even several times if that fits your schedule. You don't really need a special recipe book (though it might be interesting). For example you can refrigerate the bulk ferment half-way through, let it warm up and finish, refrigerate it again, later shape a loaf cold and let it proof for say an hour, refrigerate that, and then score and bake it straight from the fridge later when convenient.
More refrigeration tends to bring in some sourness, often just a small amount, and to improve the flavor. If you don't like that after trying it, you can add some sugar to the dough, start with a stiffer levain, or use some other way to add some sweetness.
You can even do this with dough leavened with instant dry yeast. I have made a ball of yeasted dough, let it rise for several hours, divided it into smaller portions and refrigerated those. Over the next week those portions doubled in volume, and baked up perfectly well.
Assuming you have a schedule where you have to leave at 8 AM and get back home at 5 PM, you could make your bread something like this:
- night before, maybe at 7 PM, refresh your starter. refrigerate it just before bedtime.
Day 1
---------
- 5:30 PM Mix dough, just enough to wet all the flour and get a single mass of dough. (3 minutes)
- sometime between 6 and 8 PM, knead dough by hand briefly and stretch it a little (5 min)
- Between 8 PM and bedtime, do 2 or 3 stretch and fold sessions
- At bedtime, refrigerate the dough.
-
Day 2
--------
- At 6 or 7 PM, remove from refrigerator, shape a loaf (make sure to stretch the dough well while you do this), and let proof until either it is about an hour short of fully proofed, or until bed time. Then refrigerate.
Day 3
-------
- After work, preheat the oven to baking temperature
- Remove loaf from oven, score, and bake directly from cold.
Note - The dough should be covered at all times in and out of the refrigerator to prevent the surface from drying out too much.
The example schedule is not something to follow slavishly. Instead, use it to get the idea of how easy it is to divide up the parts of the whole process. There may be some unusual breads that cannot be scheduled this way, but most ordinary bread recipes will take to it happily.
TomP
Thanks for such a thorough and thoughtful response. I will refer back to this post.
But as you mentioned, a special recipe book might be interesting.
It can give me ideas and inspiration.
There's always the original no-knead book by Jim Lahey -
https://wwnorton.com/books/My-Bread/
In this approach you mix a large batch of high-hydration dough and put it into the refrigerator. After one or several days, when you want to bake you cut off a hunk of it, shape a loaf, and bake. He has a number of different recipes in the book, and it looks like there's a new edition with even more.
Ken Forkish's book Evolutions In Bread has many good overnight recipes, though you will have to do some stretch and folds over the course of an evening.
You can check out the series of Five Minutes A Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François
Thanks for the various book suggestions.
The Book that I have been working with as of late is Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, extraodinary Flavour.
All of the recpies in there are biga based (or else sourdough) and his goal in the book is to get better flavor out of whole wheat by letting it sit overnight. Either way it is full of recepies that meet the criteria you are talking about.
Hamelman's "Bread" 3rd edition has I think at least one formula that you might be looking for:
100% Whole Wheat "Workday" Bread The formula is designed so that all the work can be done before or after a regular workday.
Many of the formulas here: Bread Formulas (from "Bread", "The Rye Baker", and other sources) have similar schedules. Several of the rye formulas can be mixed -> baked on the 2nd day which might work for you on a non-workday morning.
No-knead formulas with commercial yeast can be mixed at your convenience and then go into the fridge until you're ready to shape, proof, and bake them.