Update: I’ve written up a short post about no-knead bread in Norwegian – Brød uten å kna – to accompany my appearance in the popular science program Schrödingers katt.

I know – since the NY Times article about Jim Lahey in 2006 the no-knead breads have been all over the internet, newspapers and now even appear in numerous books – this is really old news. But the no-knead breads are really tasty as well, so I hope you’ll forgive me! When I give popular science talks about chemistry in the kitchen the one thing I’m always asked about is the no-knead recipe I show, so I thought it was about time to publish a recipe. Surely, everyone can google it – but regrettably many (if not most?) recipes are given in non-metric, volume based units – even Jim Lahey’s original recipe. And for baking this is really a drawback because the density of flour depends so much on how tight you pack it. Oh yeah, and I will also try to explain why and how the no-knead bread works.

The stretchy gluten which gives a dough its elasticity is formed when the two proteins glutenin and gliadin bind together. Kneading can speed up this process, but in a wetter dough the mobility of glutenin and gliadin increases, and given enough time they can actually manage it all by themselves. That’s why a wet dough needs time to develop the gluten network, but no kneading.

This is to show what 3 g fresh yeast looks like, in case you don’t have a balance that can accurately weigh such a small mass.

I’ve often seen it mentioned that a longer fermentation and/or less yeast gives a richer aroma. I think it’s true, but I’m not quite sure why this is the case. If the flavor compounds are produced proportionally to the carbon dioxide, the easiest way to increase flavor would be to up the amount of yeast. A lower temperature and/or less yeast would only mean that it takes longer to produce the same amount of carbon dioxid and flavor compounds. However, most of the advice I’ve seen about baking suggests that there is a flavor improvement by extending the fermentation time. So to rephrase the question: Why is the desirable bread flavor not proportional to the amount of yeast added? Some claim that the bitter flavor of pure yeast can dominate the flavor of the resulting bread if used at to high levels – but I have never been bothered by yeast flavor, even when using 50 g of fresh yeast for 1-2 kg of flour. But maybe I’m just insensitive to this bitterness? It could also be that the flavor profile produced by the yeast benefits from the lower temperature, but I doubt that one would actually be able to tell the difference in bread (you can easily tell the difference in beer, but here the fermentation may take from days to weeks – see also my post on Baking with hefeweizen yeast). Another possible explanation could be that enzymes, which are present in the flour or slowly produced by the yeast, contribute significantly to the flavor if given enough time. Amylase is one such enzyme which converts starch to sugar. It’s naturally produced by yeast, but it’s often added in pure form to “industrial doughs” to speed things up. Yet another explanation is that a long proofing time will allow a certain production of organic acids by the bacteria which are always present (this of course is what gives sour doughs their characteristic flavor).

The most unusual step in making no-knead bread is that it’s baked in a preheated heavy cooking pan, also known as a Dutch oven, usually made from cast iron. But this is indeed very clever! Professional bakers are lucky to have steam inlets in their ovens, because steam has a heat capacity which is much higher than that of dry air. Because of this the loaf will heat up quicker, giving a better oven spring. But the moist air inside the covered pan does more: as long as the loaf is colder than the pan the moisture will actually condense on the surface of the bread, thereby keeping it moist. This ensures that the oven spring is not hindered by a dry crust. Secondly, this moisture is important for a proper gelatinization of the starch: we are setting the stage for the Maillard reaction.

After about 30 min the lid is removed. At this point one will see the nice oven spring, but also notice that no browning has occured sine the temperature in the crust has been kept below the boiling point due the condensation of moisture on the surface. Once the lid is removed moisture can escape and the temperature in the crust rapidly rises above 110 °C where the Maillard reaction proceeds more rapidly. This is what gives the crust it’s nice brown color and also gives rise to the beautiful smell of fresh baked bread. At this point, the total baking time should be determined by the color of the loaf. When the surface is sufficiently browned your no-knead bread is finished.

Salt is very important, so don’t omit it from the bread. If you try to reduce the amount of salt in your diet – do so by eating less fast food and industrially prepared food. Don’t mess with the salt levels of home baked bread. It’s there for the taste, but it also improves the strength of the gluten network.

No-knead bread (based on Jim Lahey’s recipe)

390 g all purpose white flour
300 g water (77%)
7 g salt (1.8%)
~1-3 g fresh yeast

Mix everything until the flour is completely moistened. Cover and leave for 15-25 hours. Pour onto a floured surface, fold 3-4 times, shape rapidly into a boule, place it on a generously floured cloth/towel seamside down and proof until doubled in size (~2 hours). Dump seam side up into a cast iron pan preheated to 230 °C and bake with the lid on for 30 min. Take the lid of and bake until the crust has a dark golden color – approximately 15 min.

Proofing the loaf on well floured towel

The percentages in the recipe are so-called Baker’s percentages, giving the amount of the ingredients in percent of the flour. The amount of water is often referred to as the degree of hydration. I’ve had good results with a hydration of 77%, but you may want to adjust this depending on your preferences. In fact, it’s impossible to know exactly what hydration Jim Lahey used because of his volume measurements! The recipe posted on the Sullivan Street Bakery’s homepage has a hydration of 80%, but I wonder whether the amounts are calculated or measured. My advice is to start at 77% and then adjust up/down in the range 75-80%. By adjusting the hydration you will indirectly also adjust the size of the pores (more water = larger pores) and the moistness of the bread. The higher hydration will of course yield a more sticky dough, but don’t forget that it’s a no-knead bread, so you’re supposed to handle the dough as little as possible.

Regarding the amount of yeast I’d start with 3 g, but if you feel that it rises to quickly you can lower this to 1-2 g. The main reason for this variability is that the activity (= number of living yeast cells) of fresh yeast decreases with time. Homebrewers can calculate exact pitching rates for yeast based on a ~5% loss of viability per week for liquid yeast. My guess is that compressed yeast is more stable, but I haven’t been able to find any data on it’s viability.

My no-knead breads look a bit different every time I bake them, but that’s OK.

The required hydration depends a lot on flour as well of course! No-knead breads can greatly benefit from substituting some of the white flour with whole grain flours, or ancient cereals such as emmer (farro), spelt, einkorn etc. Whole grain flours tend to bind more water though and develop a less strong gluten network. This last point is well illustrated by my failed attempt to bake a no-knead bread with 100% emmer. The resulting flat loaf is shown in the picture below.

No-knead bread with 100% emmer did not have a sufficiently strong gluten network – the bread ended up very flat…

Further reading:
The Secret of Great Bread: Let Time Do the Work (original NY Times article)
No-Knead Bread (original recipe from Jim Lahey)
Soon the bread will be making itself
Simple Crusty Bread (recipe)
No-Knead Bread: Not Making Itself Yet, but a Lot Quicker
Speedy No-Knead Bread (recipe)
Fast No-Knead Whole Wheat Bread (recipe)
eGullet thread on no-knead breads

Nathan Myhrvold giving a TED talk about some of his many interest (click image to see video). Photo by Neil Hunt from flickr.com (CC BY-NC 2.0).

If you’ve played around with sous vide cooking there’s a good chance that you’ve visited the massive eGullet thread on sous vide (currently spanning more than 100 pages and 3000 posts), and in that case you’ll be familiar with Nathan’s many well informed posts on sous vide. There have been rumours about an upcoming book for quite some time, and things are getting more and more exciting. The last I heard was that he had a team of 5 people working on a book about sous-vide. This has now increased to a team of 15 people, including 5 professional chefs, a photographer, an art director, writers and editors. And there’s more:

“The project has grown in size and scope. Originally planned as a 300-page discussion of sous vide, an increasingly popular restaurant technique of cooking food in vacuum-sealed bags in warm water baths, the book has swelled to 1,500 pages that will also cover microbiology, food safety, the physics of heat transfer on the stove and in the oven, formulas for turning fruit and vegetable juices into gels, and more.”

Wow! Let’s hope that Nathan’s “one year left” statement is actually true this time. I’m really looking forward to see this book!

Rob Mifsud, perhaps best know for his Hungry in Hogtown blog has interviewed Hervé This. At the end of the interview Hervé lists 10 elements of basic kitchen knowledge. Some may seem obvious, but they are not, according to Hervé. Here’s the list so you can judge by yourselves:

1. Salt dissolves in water.
2. Salt does not dissolve in oil.
3. Oil does not dissolve in water.
4. Water boils at 100 °C (212 °F).
5. Generally foods contain mostly water (or another fluid).
6. Foods without water or fluid are tough.
7. Some proteins (in eggs, meat, fish) coagulate.
8. Collagen dissolves in water at temperatures higher than 55 °C (131 °F).
9. Dishes are dispersed systems (combinations of gas, liquid or solid ingredients transformed by cooking).
10. Some chemical processes – such as the Maillard Reaction (browning or caramelizing) – generate new flavours.

A recent cover feature of Time magazine was “10 Ideas That Are Changing The World”. According to journalist Joel Stein ” ideas are the secret power that this planet runs on”, and guess what? Idea #5 is Kitchen Chemistry. Some are fed up with foams (why does everyone think molecular gastronomy is only about foams anyway?), but my guess is that scientific approaches in the kitchen will become more and more common in the years to come and I certainly welcome this focus on kitchen chemistry.

This paradigm shift won’t be such a big deal in practice. Your oven is pretty much an advanced science gadget already, you use meat thermometers, and that measuring cup looks an awful lot like a beaker. You’re just going to have to step it up a little: replace that liquid-measuring cup with a more accurate dry-weight scale; get a vacuum sealer like that FoodSaver gadget and a Crock-Pot that stays at a precise temperature so you can sous vide meat (which involves cooking it in a bag for a long time in a low-temperature water bath); learn how to use simple chemicals like agar-agar and xanthan gum (just better versions of gelatin and cornstarch, really); review a little high school chemistry. No big deal.

Just wanted to point you to a beautiful picture gallery of edible cocktails accompanying an article by Betty Hallock at LA Times, “Cocktails you can eat”.

The recipes (shortened and converted to metric units by me) are as follows:

Blueberry martini jelly shots
300 mL vodka (blueberry flavored)
60 mL simple syrup
25 g gelatin (6.9%)
35 fresh blueberries

Mix vodka and syrup in small saucepan. Add gelatin and leave for 5-10 min until soft. Gently heat saucepan and stir until gelatin dissolves (approx. 10 min). Strain to remove any undissolved gelatin. Place bluberry in cocktail mold and pour vodka mixture into each mold. Cool until set. Makes about 35 cocktails of 15 mL each. (Adapted from Bar Nineteen 12)

Prosecco gelée
1 length of a vanilla bean
140 g sugar
15 g gelatin sheets, bloomed (3.1%)
340 mL Prosecco (or other white wine)

Scrape seeds from vanilla bean and mix thoroughly with sugar. Mix water and sugar in saucepan and heat over high heat until syrup almost comes to a boil. Remove from heat and bloomed gelatin and stir until it dissolves. Add wine and stir gently. Pour into 20 x 20 cm pan lined with plastic wrap and cool until set. Cut into squares, turn upside down to display settled vanilla beans and serve. (Adapted from Craft pastry chef Catherine Schimenti)

B-52 jelly shots
170 mL Kahlúa
170 mL Baileys
170 mL Grand Marnier
24 g gelatin sheets (4.7%)

Place each liqueur in separate bowls and add 8 g gelatin to each. Cover and leave until gelatin has softened. Pour Kahlúa/gelatin into a saucepan and heat over low heat until gelatin dissolves. Strain to remove any remaining solids. Pour liquid into a 10 x 20 cm pan lined with plastic wrap. Cool for about one hour. Repeat with Baileys, and then with Grand Marnier, pouring the newly prepared liqueur on top of the set liqueur in the mold. Cut into pieces and serve. (Adapted from Bar Nineteen 12)

Gin and tonic gelée
170 mL gin
10 g gelatin (2.2%)
280 mL tonic water
finely grated zest of 4 to 5 limes
1 T citric acid
1 1/2 t baking soda
1 T powdered sugar

Let the gelatin soften in gin for 5-10 min. Heat over low heat and stir until gelatin has dissolved. Pour in tonic water carefully (to avoid it from bubbling over), swirl the contents to obtain a homogeneous mixture and immediatly pour contents into 40 mL molds. Cool. To serve, unmold the gelée and sprinkle each cocktail with lime zest and a little of the premixed citric acid, baking soda and powdered sugar. Serve immediately. (Adapted from Providence pastry chef Adrian Vasquez) For reference, you might want to compare this recipe with Eben Freeman’s Jellied G&T.

You might notice that the amount of gelatin varies over a pretty large range from 2.2-6.9%. This is also well above the typical concentration found in jellies (0.6-1%). A possible reason for the large range would be that alcohol interferes with the setting of gelatin, and a quick plot of gelatin vs. alcohol content suggests that this might be the case.

But as you can see from the B-52 jelly shots, the same concentration of gelatin is used for Baileys (17% alcohol), Kahlúa (26.5% alcohol) and Grand Marnier (40% alcohol), so there should be some room for variation here (I doubt that the resulting variation in texture was actually intended in this recipe). So if we round off, the linear regression yields the following correlation between gelatin and alcohol:

% gelatin to add = (% alcohol in final mix x 0.1) + 2

One thing that surprises me is that none of the recipes call for gellan? This hydrocolloid is said to have superior flavor release properties as it is more prone to break once you chew it. From what I know, it should work fine with alcoholic beverages. Has anyone tried this yet?

According to Hervé This, there’s still some 25.000 cooking instructions left to test! And when it comes to the understanding of how the sense of smell works, we’ve just got started. So sorry Heston, I think it’s a bit early to dismiss molecular gastronomy already now.

Well certainly no one can disagree with the first statement… As for tradition – of course cooking has evolved a lot over the last couple thousand years – so again I would say that this is quite obvious. What molecular gastronomy (in my opinion) is about is, from a scientific viewpoint, to increase the understanding of what is going on. Tradition tells us nothing about this whereas science has told us a lot!

I guess this is where molecular gastronomy (or the-science-previously-known-as-molecular-gastronomy as ABK&M might call it) comes in. I note that they only embrace it though if it “can make a real contribution” to their cooking. In other words, they embrace they technological aspects of molecular gastronomy which according to Hervé This’ latest definition isn’t really a part of molecular gastronomy.

Again – nothing really new here… except that one could always wish for even more sharing and openness regarding techniques and ingredients. But all in all ABK&M have been good at publishing their recipes and findings (as should be evident from the books listed at khymos.org). Of course this also alludes to the intellectual property debate which was started of by this article.

So what do we make of this? First thing is that none of them are scientists (save McGee who holds a BSc in physics and who BTW has defined molecular gastronomy as “the scientific study of deliciousness”). In a way it’s understandable that they don’t want to be viewed upon as scientists but rather artists. But it is a little strange though, because the article does have a negative stance on molecular gastronomy. This is surprising from a group of people who have both benefited from and contributed to molecular gastronomy by adding an artistic component to the underlying science. Secondly I wonder if it’s about fashion as well. Perhaps the air is going out of the balloon now? If molecular gastronomy is not übercool anymore, it’s time to move on with something new to attract guests. But is it really time to “reject the cult of molecular gastronomy” (Vanessa Thorpe of The Guardian, in the article “Mad scientist? No, I’m just seroious about food”)? If you ask me, my answer is “No”!