Bake up a fresh loaf of artisan bread without any kneading or complex mixing steps. The no-knead crusty bread recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day is perfect for beginners and experts alike. Try the recipe we tested in the video using the recipe below, and then use your leftover dough to make one of the variations shared by authors Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. No-Knead Bread Recipes Original No-Knead Bread Dough (featured in this video) Neapolitan Pizza Dough Recipe 100 Percent Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread Recipe Sticky Pecan Caramel Rolls Recipe Easy Naan Bread Recipe Caramelized Onion and Herb Dinner Rolls Recipe Gluten Free Bread in Five Minutes a Day VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Alyssa Warner: This no-knead bread recipe comes from the December/January 2008 issue of Mother Earth News. Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois, writers of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, share the basic bread recipe from their book, as well as modifications for gluten-free bread, pizza dough, whole wheat sandwich bread, sticky caramel buns, naan, and an onion and herb dinner roll. [00:00:23] They write, "A one or two-week supply of this dough is made in advance and refrigerated. Mixing it takes less than 15 minutes. Every day, cut off a hunk of dough and quickly shape it without kneading. Allow it to rest briefly on the counter, and then toss it in the oven. We don't count the rest time or baking time, usually about 30 minutes to an hour each, in our calculation because you can do something else while that's happening. [00:00:49] If you bake after dinner, the bread will still be fresh the next day. Higher moisture breads stay fresh longer. But the method is so convenient that you'll probably find you can cut off some dough and bake a loaf every morning before your day [00:01:00] starts. If you wanna have one thing to do every day that is simply perfect, this is it." [00:01:06] So check out the recipe below to read the full article. So my favorite thing about the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day no-knead dough recipe is that it is incredibly fast and incredibly easy. This is the container from the last batch of this dough. It's really nice to have all of these little bits of flour sticking to the side because this will help our new dough gain a mature flavor a little bit faster. [00:01:34] All we're gonna do, and it's very easy, is we're going to combine in our tub the flour, unbleached all-purpose [00:01:50] And the water, yeast, and salt [00:01:58] And mix. And that's [00:02:00] literally it. That's the whole recipe. It's wonderful [00:02:09] Literally, you put it all together and you let time and cold refrigerator temperatures do the rest of the work And it is surprisingly consistent in results, and it keeps for up to two weeks in your fridge. And I can still see, this is why I like these plastic tubs. They're lightweight, they stack well in my freezer, or my fridge, excuse me, and you can see when there's still flour that hasn't been mixed in at the bottom [00:02:52] Now they're very adamant, don't knead it. I'm just working the flour in. And it was hard to mix[00:03:00] [00:03:05] All right. And that's it. This shaggy mess [00:03:13] Is going to go into this container, and tomorrow it's gonna come out bread. We're gonna go ahead and leave this at room temperature for two hours, up to five hours without problem. I'm gonna stick it in the fridge. Make sure not to use an airtight lid. I like these because they just, they don't really secure on. [00:03:32] Then we're gonna stick it in the fridge. It's gonna rise and fall overnight. It's gonna do its own thing, and then later we can use it to make any number of recipes. Do give their book a try if you like this idea. I know I really like it. So on the day of baking, you're gonna go ahead and take your container of dough out of the fridge, and it should look kind of something like this. [00:03:55] It'll have a pattern of rising and falling without you even touching it, and it [00:04:00] doesn't really matter where it is in that pattern when you're ready to use it. So we're gonna open this up, and look at that [00:04:14] I'm gonna sprinkle a bit of flour on the top and take about a grapefruit size of dough and sit it on a floured surface. And much like forming any other high-hydration dough, we're gonna make sure that the bottom of it gets floured, and then we're gonna gather up the wet sides of the dough so that the floured sides of the dough are on the outside [00:04:53] And you wanna turn it over And pick a spot that's not so flowered and pull [00:05:00] towards yourself [00:05:08] All right. What I like about this bread is that because you only really have to put effort into it when you're making the dough and when you're forming the loaf, it doesn't feel like a waste of time to make a smaller loaf. If I had spent all day folding or kneading and baking this for this small of a loaf, I might be a little bit sad. [00:05:29] And we're gonna let this rise on a pizza peel Go ahead and sprinkle it very generously with cornmeal. Doesn't really matter what kind of cornmeal. This is just to keep it from sticking [00:05:45] And put it seam side down onto the peel. And the other thing that we're gonna do is we're going to sprinkle it with some bread flour to make sure that it doesn't dry out while it's rising. And we're just gonna [00:06:00] let this sit for about 40 minutes, and then we're gonna stick it in the oven [00:06:12] So this has been sitting for a little more than 40 minutes. It's just a little bit over-proofed, but this recipe is so forgiving that it's gonna be just fine. You can score your bread with a lame with a little razor blade, but special tools are not necessary. You can just use a serrated knife. We're gonna do just an X across the top. [00:06:32] Make sure that you have a nice floured surface to work with to reduce the drag of the blade, and slash [00:06:44] Try not to go back and forth, just pull. And now this is going to go into the oven with a hot pan of water onto a baking stone at 450 degrees till it's dark, crusty brown[00:07:00] [00:07:03] If you don't have a pizza peel, you can use the back of a pan [00:07:33] Here is our artisan bread out of our overnight no-knead dough. We know it's done because it's internally 190 degrees, and when we knock on it, it sounds hollow. One thing I will say, we wanted to make sure to show you how to pour the hot water into the oven underneath the loaf, but that means we left the oven door open a little too long. [00:07:59] So make [00:08:00] sure you do that very quickly or you won't get as much heat in the oven, you won't get as much steam, and you don't get as pronounced an ear. Like this has a very small ear. But it's still very well-cooked and it's still gonna be delicious!

This recipe from our archives is the perfect base overnight dough for any of your favorite pastries. It does well sweet, savory, and even lightly laminated! Check out the original refrigerator pastry dough recipe, which also contains Wendy Akin's recipes for cinnamon pecan sticky buns, french raisin snails, and Italian Panettone minis, the pastry we make in this video. In this video, we also tried this pastry dough as the base for a savory jalapeno cheddar pull-apart bread, also known as "monkey" bread. Can't find candied lemon peel in store either? Try making your own using Akin's candied citrus peel recipe. Monkey Bread Recipe Ingredients 1 Recipe refrigerator pastry dough 1/2 cup pickled jalapenos, diced and pat dry 2 cups cheese, shredded 1/2 cup butter, melted Directions Turn out the dough onto a floured board. Pat out and knead in the jalapenos. Form the dough into a log and cut into small pieces, sized to be individual bites. Prepare 2 loaf pans or 1 tube pan with butter and flour. Toss the dough balls with shredded cheese and arrange in pan. Pour melted butter evenly over the dough in the pan(s). Cover loosely with a towel and let rise till doubled. Bake at 350 degrees until internal temperature reads 190 degrees (40-50 minutes, depending on your pan). At the 30 minute mark, check to see if the top of your bread has browned. You may need to cover your bread with foil if it is browning too fast. Remove from oven. Allow to cool 5 minutes, then invert onto a plate or board. Best served hot! You can use any sweet or savory fillings to make monkey bread. Roll plain dough in cinnamon and sugar for cinnamon roll monkey bread, or mix olives and feta into the dough and toss the bites with Parmesan, or mix chives into the dough and toss with sesame seeds and garlic butter; the possibilities are endless! VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Alyssa Warner: This overnight refrigerator dough for American and European pastries is from Wendy Aken, a Texas farmer and regular Mother Earth News recipe contributor. She writes many recipes of classic kitchen staples, including biscotti, lemon marmalade, blue ribbon-winning pickles, traditional Christmas stollen, and more. [00:00:19] I discovered this one in May, and since then, I've made it a habit to keep a couple of batches wrapped up in the freezer to be unfrozen overnight for surprise guests or special occasions. It works well with sweet or savory recipes, and can even handle being roughly laminated with butter. This base dough recipe can be made into all manner of pastries. [00:00:39] Aken shared cinnamon pecan sticky buns, French raisin snails, and the Italian panettone minis that we will be making today. We're also gonna be making a jalapeno cheese monkey bread, an adaptation of my creation, to give you both a sweet and a savory sharable bread for all your holiday [00:01:00] get-togethers. [00:01:00] We're gonna make the dough for our overnight pastry. Now, this dough is gonna be a little strange. This is one of those where you read the recipe and you follow along, and you just trust the process. The dough, when it comes together, is gonna be a little more like a batter. It's gonna be incredibly soft and impossible to work with and knead. [00:01:24] But again, we're just gonna trust the process because we know that Wendy is an expert. So this recipe starts with two cups of pastry flour. Now, pastry flour is a little tough to find. I do not wanna disclose how many stores I went to, but it was very many stores, and none of them had pastry flour. You can substitute for pastry flour by adding corn starch to regular flour, about two tablespoons per cup. [00:01:51] We used half cake flour and half all-purpose flour, and this just creates a flour with a similar protein [00:02:00] content to pastry flour. And the reason that we are using pastry flour is that it has a lower protein content, and it yields a more tender crumb. I've made this recipe 100 times using the substitution. [00:02:13] Either corn starch or the half cake flour, half all-purpose flour method work just fine. But maybe if there's someone you're baking for a special occasion, you can go ahead and order pastry flour online. So here's our dry, so this is our sugar, our yeast, our salt, and our two cups pastry flour substitute [00:02:38] And we're just gonna sift this together [00:02:52] You do a little bit of mixing by hand [00:02:59] And [00:03:00] then we're gonna take this hot water and butter mixture and we are going to add it into our pastry flour [00:03:18] Now we're gonna go ahead and let that beat together for about one minute. Okay, now that has all been combined together by the way, I'm sure you noticed, but just in case you haven't and you're just listening we are using the paddle attachment and not the dough hook All right, so now that's all mixed together, we're gonna go in ahead and add the rest of our wet ingredients. [00:03:45] So it's gonna be three eggs, some orange zest, and some vanilla. Now, Wendy recommends whenever you eat an orange, if you're not gonna be using the rind, just top off a container or a Ziploc [00:04:00] bag in your freezer of the zest if you have a minute. You can also preserve orange zest with sugar. So in we go [00:04:24] Once that's all combined together, we're going to add some all-purpose flour [00:04:54] Now that's all combined, we're gonna have a really strange looking dough [00:05:00] that I promise will turn out better in the morning. Now that's done, you can go ahead and put this in an airtight container in the fridge And let it just do its thing overnight. After that, you can either bake with it or put it in an airtight container or wrap it in plastic and foil and freeze it. [00:05:23] We'll see you in a bit to make some panettone and jalapeno cheese bread. Here's our overnight pastry dough that has been in the fridge. I've made this up to three days in advance, which I don't know if this is particularly recommended, but it still works [00:05:39] As you can see, it's really risen [00:05:47] And I'm just gonna sprinkle some flour on top and dump the whole thing out. This is a double recipe, and we're gonna use it to make the Italian panettone, and we're going to use it to make the jalapeno cheese bread. Whoo, [00:06:00] look at that dough. Let's get all of this out [00:06:10] So there's our double recipe of our overnight refrigerator pastry I'm gonna roll it out onto a floured surface and gently cut it in half [00:06:33] And I'm gonna take the one that we're going to use for the cheese bread and I'm gonna set it aside. Thank you. And we're gonna take the one we're using to make the panettone and bring it over here [00:06:52] All right. So gently pat this into a rectangle. [00:07:00] Now, full disclosure, the recipe calls for half a cup of candied lemon peel, but that was basically impossible to find in the, in Topeka, Kansas. You can find it in some specialty stores, but it's something that you really have to make yourself if you want access to it, and we have a recipe, and I'm gonna link it down below. [00:07:19] We are substituting with candied crystallized ginger. Panettone is a fancy Italian fruit bread, and it's a very popular thing in the holidays. You can add candied nuts, any kind of candied fruit, currants. Today we're gonna be using golden raisins and that candied crystallized ginger cut into strips. When I was in college, I worked at a fancy cooking store that shall not be named, and they were famous for putting out $50 panettone loaves with candied chestnuts, and you can make that yourself for way less[00:08:00] [00:08:00] All right. So here are all my mix-ins, all my fillings and gently we're gonna treat our dough very gently so as not to deflate it We're gonna go ahead and fold [00:08:16] Fold it all in [00:08:26] We also wanna be careful not to add too much flour at this point, but a little's gonna get put in there to avoid sticking anyway Now, once you have this roughly mixed together and all folded in, oof, go ahead and roll it out into a log [00:08:53] and divide that log into 12 muffins[00:09:00] [00:09:03] Sometimes it takes a minute because we're trying to be gentle [00:09:15] And that means in half [00:09:21] And then again in half [00:09:26] And then into thirds. And then you're gonna take your dough and you're gonna fold it into kind of a disc, and then you're gonna pull the corners of that disc, the edges in, until you have a tight little ball [00:09:55] And that we're gonna stick in a buttered muffin tin[00:10:00] [00:10:00] and allow it to rise till it's doubled in size. I find that takes about 40 minutes [00:10:11] If this dough has been in your fridge for more than a day, you might not see so much rise at this proofing stage. And after 40 minutes, even if it hasn't doubled, go ahead and bake anyway. You can line these with parchment Or with muffin tins, but we're just gonna put butter [00:10:44] All right. And those are our little panettones. We're gonna let them rise. So using the same dough, we're going to make a savory jalapeno cheese bread. So this is a pull-apart bread. I grew up with these being called monkey bread[00:11:00] [00:11:02] And the idea is it's great for parties because everyone can just grab pieces off of your warm loaf without needing any additional garnishes. You're probably very familiar with cinnamon sugar, cinnamon roll type monkey bread, but it works really well with cheesy pastries [00:11:27] Here's the second half of our pastry dough. And we're gonna do the same thing. We're gonna pat it out into a rectangle And fold in these chopped jalapenos [00:11:48] Look at how easy that is to work with[00:12:00] [00:12:06] Okay. And once that filling is folded throughout the dough [00:12:16] Careful since the jalapenos are wet. The dough might get a little sticky [00:12:30] You can flour your pastry cutter as well. And we're just gonna cut diagonally little bite-sized pieces of dough Even this is a little bit big [00:12:48] Now You wanna work in layers with this bread[00:13:00] [00:13:02] Because you wanna make sure that there is cheese around all the different pieces [00:13:12] So now that we have one layer in, we're gonna go ahead and sprinkle some cheese [00:13:24] And then [00:13:29] Continue to work through This recipe also works really well in a tube pan like a Bundt pan. Not necessarily because it's pretty, but because it's great for parties. When you invert your tube pan, there's a little hole in the middle, and you can stick a bowl of dip right in the center. Extra nacho cheese with your jalapeno cheese bread And we're gonna do another layer of [00:14:00] cheese [00:14:12] The cheese is gonna melt and lose volume, so make sure you fill generously all those nooks and crannies [00:14:26] You can use a block of cheese, but I like to use shredded because the starch that they put on the cheese to help it help them stay as individual little shreds also helps to keep these little pieces of dough from just squishing together and becoming just a normal bread. And you work so hard to cut it up and layer it up, you want it to be You want it to be a good monkey bread. [00:14:53] This kind of bread also works with feta and Kalamata olives. It works really well [00:15:00] with chives and sesame seeds. Really, your imagination is the limit. Okay. And then the last round here [00:15:20] And there we go. We're gonna let this rise For about 40 minutes as well. And right before it goes in the oven, we're gonna go ahead and put some butter, about half a cup of butter poured evenly all over the top of this, and that is also gonna help to make sure that the individual pieces don't stick together. [00:15:45] We'll see you in 40 minutes. Here's the panettone. It's gonna s- They're a hard crust now, but they'll soften up as they cool. La. And here's that pull-apart bread. Monkey see, monkey [00:16:00] do. And you're gonna turn that over and serve it [00:16:08] But maybe use a slightly bigger pan. I really like these panettone minis. I used to work at one of those crazy fancy cooking stores, and we would sell this bread for $60 a tin. But this is pretty crazy easy to do yourself, and this is the first recipe that I've ever tried that was soft enough to compare with those professional versions. [00:16:33] Now, when you're done with your jalapeno cheese bread, if you've made it in a Bundt pan or if you've made it in two loaf pans when it's still warm, and it's vital that it's still warm, otherwise you're gonna have a bit of trouble, you're going to want to flip it over so that you can serve it[00:17:00] [00:17:09] Ta-da. And look at that beautiful bread. My favorite thing about making a pull-apart bread, whether it's this jalapeno cheese version or maybe a cinnamon a cinnamon brown sugar version, is that if you do it in a Bundt pan, you can get a little bowl, you can fill it with your favorite dipping sauce. For this one I'd probably do queso or a spicy cream cheese mixture. [00:17:32] And you can just set it right in the middle, and it's so fancy. Your guests will all be extremely impressed when you bring your pull-apart bread

Bake up the perfect sandwich bread with this simple but versatile recipe built from years of baking experience. Learn how to customize this recipe to your needs, whether you need a rich loaf, a fluffy loaf, or even dinner rolls! Perfect Sandwich Bread Recipe Ingredients 1-1/2 cup Bread flour, plus additional flour for workable dough 1/8 cup sugar 2-1/2 tsp instant yeast (1 packet) 1 tsp salt 3/4 cup water 3/4 cup milk 3 Tbsp butter 1 Tbsp honey 1 egg Directions Add dry ingredients, starting with 1-1/2 cup bread flour, sugar, yeast, and salt to a bowl and whisk to combine Combine water and milk, then microwave until it reaches 130°. Add butter and honey to the wet ingredients and stir until the butter and honey melt in. The butter and honey cool the milk mixture down. Add the milk mixture into the dry ingredients and stir to combine. It's okay if there are lumps at this point. Stir in the egg. Add the entire egg for a richer, yolkier bread. For a less rich bread, add egg white only. For fluffier bread, add 2 egg whites. Continue to add bread flour until the mixture is no longer sticky and can be handled, but not too much to where it's hard to knead. Knead until the dough forms a clean ball and place in oiled bowl and cover. Place in a warm area to rise for 1 hour. While the dough rises, prepare a greased bread pan lined with parchment paper. The dough should have doubled in size — Punch down the dough and either separate into 2 pieces for 2 smaller loaves or leave whole for a larger loaf. Place dough on a well-floured surface and roll into a rectangle with a depth of the length of the loaf pan. The width should be about 12-16 inches, or roll until the dough is 1/2 inch thick. Roll into a loaf, starting with the shorter side, so that the depth of the loaf matches the length of the bread pan. Pinch the ends together with the seam on the bottom of the loaf. Pinch the seam on the bottom together as well. Place the loaf into the bread pan, seam side down, and let rise (covered) for 1 hour or until the loaf has doubled in size. Bake at 350° for 25-30 minutes depending on oven and size of pan. Top should be golden. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Alyssa Warner: This sandwich bread recipe is from our very own Megan Olmsted from her time in a bakery. This classic sandwich bread recipe can be made either as a loaf pan or a pan of rolls, and the recipe can be customized to your needs, taste, and usage. Let's go see how Megan developed her recipe. [00:00:18] Megan Olmsted: I've tried more sandwich bread recipes than I can count. [00:00:21] Most had some things I loved, and some techniques didn't work so well, but none of them gave me a truly all-purpose bread. After experimenting with so many recipes, I instinctively began combining all of the techniques that I liked to create the perfect loaf. Baking really is a science, and each ingredient can be adjust- adjusted to achieve the exact bread you're aiming for. [00:00:43] Sometimes you want a thick, fluffy slice of bread straight from the oven with flavored butter or homemade jam or nothing if you just like plain bread right from the oven. I personally prefer a sweeter, richer bread with more of an egg flavor for French toast. Sometimes [00:01:00] you don't really wanna taste the bread that much for sandwiches. [00:01:02] You just want something sturdy that's not gonna fall apart in a sandwich so you can taste the sandwich fillings. Learning how the ingredients interact can help you achieve the perfect loaf of sandwich bread. This sandwich bread recipe is a good base one. It's a really simple bread recipe if you're just starting out. [00:01:16] It can meet all of your sandwich bread needs, whether it's supporting your favorite toppings or being enjoyed for its own flavor. This recipe can be made with a stand mixer, or you can hand-knead it. So we're gonna start out with our dry ingredients, and you'll start out with a cup and a half of bread flour. [00:01:30] Now, we are doubling this recipe, so I have three cups of bled- bread flour here. And if you wanted to use all-purpose flour if that's all you have, you can use that. The bread flour does have extra proteins in it, which give the bread that chewier flavor. It'll take a little bit of sugar. You can cut down the amount of sugar, so it'll take h- 1/8 cup of sugar. [00:01:50] We'll also add a teaspoon of salt. And then if you're using active dry yeast, you can add that to your wet ingredients. And if you're using instant yeast, you can [00:02:00] add that right into your dry ingredients. Okay, so in the stand mixer you, if you're using a stand mixer, or in a bowl, you can go ahead and add all of your dry ingredients together. [00:02:09] So we'll start with a cup and a half of bread flour. Again, we're doubling this recipe here. And you will add to that your 1/4 cup of sugar. [00:02:25] One teaspoon of salt [00:02:31] Even the amount of salt can be changed. It does slow down the rising time a little bit, which can be a good thing if you're going for that. It just helps bring out the flavors of the bread a little bit since salt is a flavor enhancer [00:02:48] And then we will do two and a half teaspoons of yeast. And here I'm doing five for the double recipe[00:03:00] [00:03:03] And I really like to whisk my dry ingredients to get them fully incorporated. It really fluffs them up instead of packing them down [00:03:24] And because I'm using a stand mixer today, I'm gonna go ahead and add my dry ingredients right into the stand mixer [00:03:37] Okay, so with my dry ingredients in the KitchenAid, I'm moving on to my wet ingredients. In here I have six tablespoons of butter for the double recipe, and then right here I have my milk and water mixture. Three-quarters cup milk and three-quarters cup water is in this bowl right here. And this, you don't want it too hot 'cause it'll kill the yeast, so right now about [00:04:00] 115 to 120 is fine if you have the yeast in the dry ingredients. [00:04:03] If you are using active dry yeast and you are adding the yeast directly into the wet ingredients, you'll want it a little bit cooler than that. And if it's a little bit too warm, don't worry, because we are adding it to this butter, and it's gonna melt the butter, and that'll help cool down the milk mixture a little bit [00:04:29] And to my wet ingredients, I will also add one tablespoon of honey [00:04:54] And give this a good stir to help melt the butter[00:05:00] [00:05:12] If you are using only honey in your recipe, that's totally fine. You can cut down on the amount of sugar and add more honey. You could do no honey and more sugar. It's pretty customizable to what type of sweetener you would like. So if you're using more honey, you would add that with this with the wet ingredients right now. [00:05:29] Now that the milk mixture has helped melt the butter and the honey is mixed in there as well, we can go ahead and add this to the dry ingredients in the stand mixer [00:05:47] And you'll want to slowly add little amounts at a time so it doesn't clump up[00:06:00] [00:06:23] At this stage, you might wanna pause the mixer and help it along a little bit with a spatula by scraping down the sides [00:06:41] And lastly, we're gonna add the eggs after the milk mixture has been added[00:07:00] [00:07:01] I find that I have much better luck getting the eggs to mix in if I whisk them just a little bit before I add them [00:07:15] And again, we'll just run this on a low speed to get it all mixed together, and you might need to pause and use a spatula every once in a while [00:07:55] We have everything to a pretty uniform mixture, not too many big clumps. We can go [00:08:00] ahead and start adding in bread flour to actually form it into a dough [00:08:07] And you'll just wanna run the mixture on the lowest speed while you slowly add in bread flour [00:08:55] So right now we can see that it's starting to form more of a dough, and it's looking less like a batter, and it's [00:09:00] starting to pull away from the sides as the flour gets incorporated [00:09:45] If you're looking to really experiment with bread, this is a great recipe to start with because there's no exact hydration amount. So I personally prefer a lower hydration bread for sandwich bread. I don't like as sticky of a dough. But test it out and [00:10:00] see. Right now it's a little, it's a little on the sticky side. [00:10:02] But test it out. There's no harm in baking this and seeing what it turns out like to see what you like. If you're gonna let the stand mixer do the mixing, and that's totally fine, it's so easy to make bread if you just can throw all the ingredients in and walk away for a little bit, for a couple minutes, you can totally do that. [00:10:20] So I'm gonna go ahead and show what it looks like to let the stand mixer knead it a little bit, and then I'll also show you what it looks like to hand-knead it. One thing you do have to be careful about with stand mixers is you can walk away for a couple minutes, but it is easy to overmix with the stand mixer. [00:10:59] If you're gonna [00:11:00] be kneading by hand, I would suggest adding a little bit less flour into the bread mixture when you're mixing it, because you can lightly dust the surface with flour. Don't add too much because then that will change your bread recipe. You don't want to add more flour into the bread during this part. [00:11:17] You just wanna make it so that it doesn't stick to the counter [00:11:39] So there are lots of different techniques for kneading dough, but it basically comes down to folding and pushing it all together so that it just forms a smoother ball of dough. Right now it's still looking a little rough. I did let it knead in the g- in the mixer a little bit just to show that. But basically you're going to push with this part of your hand [00:12:00] and fold it over and turn. [00:12:03] And you s- start to form your own technique for what you like [00:12:22] One way to tell if your dough is done kneading is this test right here. If it starts to rip, it's going to need a little bit more kneading. This one is close, but it is starting to rip a little bit [00:12:40] Okay, so our dough is looking smooth, and when you stretch it, you can see that it's transparent without ripping. So it is done kneading, and it's ready to proof. So to let it rise, you will just need a greased bowl so it doesn't stick to the sides, and just put it in there, [00:13:00] and you'll wanna cover it up so it doesn't get dried out, and let it sit for about an hour or until it's doubled in size. [00:13:06] Okay, so our dough has more than doubled in size here, so it is ready to turn into loaves. So we'll need to punch it down a little bit so that we can work with it. And there are a few different ways to form loaves [00:13:43] If you're in a hurry, you can really just turn it inside out and just flip all of the edges under to, so you get a smooth top. And pinch them [00:14:00] together on the bottom [00:14:04] And then you can form it into a loaf shape. And this is the super quick method. It might not be as even of a loaf, but that was a pretty quick way to get a loaf. So I'll put this in my greased loaf pan [00:14:26] And I just press it down to even it out [00:14:33] If you're not in a hurry and you want something a little bit cleaner You can also roll your dough the same way you would if you were making cinnamon rolls or any other yeast dough that you roll[00:15:00] [00:15:17] So I have a rectangle here. It really doesn't have to be perfect 'cause we're gonna roll it up anyways. And so starting from the shorter end here We're just gonna roll it tightly. You don't want really any air bubbles in there [00:15:36] and then pinch the seam [00:15:44] And squeeze the ends together and tuck those under. And that gives you a little bit more uniform of a loaf. And again, that can go right in your greased loaf pan[00:16:00] [00:16:04] And the last thing you can do, since this recipe is so versatile, you can also make dinner rolls with this exact same recipe. When I make dinner rolls, there's really no technique to what I do. I just like to squeeze off a little bit at a time, about this size about inch and a half or two inches. And same way with forming a loaf, you're just gonna grab a little bit and push the ends over and squeeze those into the middle until you have a nice clean ball of dough [00:16:39] pinch it together on the bottom so it's clean [00:16:51] As you're putting these in the pan, you don't wanna make them too close together, so they probably shouldn't be touching each other because they'll need some room to rise, and they'll also expand [00:17:00] when they bake a little bit. So I'll probably fit six in here [00:17:08] So I have the loaf that was formed with my hands, and this is the quicker method. This is the loaf that I rolled out flat and then rolled up. And I have the dinner rolls right here. And same technique as before. We are just going to let these rise somewhere that's a little bit warm 70 or 75 degrees until they're doubled in size [00:17:37] Our loaves have risen, and now we're gonna bake them at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes[00:18:00] [00:18:01] Those beautiful loaves [00:18:16] Delicious So we baked off our delicious bread, and while it was really tempting to cut into it and try it right away right there out of the oven, it's vital that you not cut into soft breads like these, like sandwich breads, right away. Give them at least an hour of cool time first. Otherwise, you cut in and it just turns into a gummy mess and the chew is all wrong, and you worked so hard to make your bread. [00:18:45] You might as well wait and get to enjoy it when it's at its best. So here's one of our little mini loaves. We baked it in a muffin pan. [00:18:58] And look at that. [00:19:00] It's the perfect sandwich bread. There's no big holes so none of your sandwich goodies will slip out, and it's got [00:19:11] a nice soft crust and it rose extremely high. You'll be able to have such beautiful sandwiches with this

No yeast no problem; learn how to start your own sourdough starter today! We talk about both the discard and the no-discard methods for how to feed a sourdough starter, as well as different methods for how to store your starter long-term when you're not regularly baking. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Alyssa Warner: So before we start baking with one, let's talk about how to make your own sourdough starter, how to feed your sourdough starter, and how to store your sourdough starter. There are many methods to making a sourdough starter, and while none of them is really wrong, I do find this to be the most reliable method. [00:00:16] You wanna go ahead and start with clean hands and clean implements. I use a wide mouth glass jar so that I can see what's going on inside and because my whole hand will fit inside of it. Your starter will need access to air and the yeast in the air as it's growing, so don't use an airtight lid. We made this thing, which is just kind of a little hat, a little cozy, out of two pieces of cotton, and it allows the air and the yeast to get in and keeps bugs out. [00:00:47] If you don't have one though, you can just use a cloth and a rubber band. To make your starter, mix equal parts flour and lukewarm water. If you have a thermometer, you can aim for about 100 degrees, but if you [00:01:00] touch it and it's just a little bit warmer than your body temperature, that's just fine. I like to measure by weight to reduce dishes, but you can measure by volume if that's easier for you. [00:01:09] I use 100 grams or one cup each of flour and water. So let's go ahead and mix that together. We're just gonna add one cup of water. Woo! [00:01:25] So I'm gonna add a little bit less flour since I spilled everywhere. And [00:01:37] The same in flour [00:01:44] And it's gonna get real goopy, but we're just gonna go ahead and put our fingers in there And mix it together[00:02:00] [00:02:06] This is how we get all of the good yeast that are on my hands mixed in with the flour Now, mix together the flour and water with your hands, and this is important. We're capturing wild yeast from the environment and giving them a warm space full of nourishment where they can thrive and take over, and there's a lot of that already on your hands. [00:02:27] Mixing with clean hands gives your starter a jumpstart. Now, we're gonna let this mixture sit for three days, and over those three days, those wild yeasts that are in the air, that are on your hands, that are on the skins of the fruit in your kitchen, they're gonna make a home in the happy environment in your starter jar And you're gonna see them start to eat the nutrition that is in the flour that you used, and they're going to start creating the gas that lifts our bread, and if you let it sit long enough, it'll also create alcohol. [00:02:59] On day [00:03:00] three, you should be looking at something a little bit like this. If it's not this active, don't worry. You might just have to repeat feeds a little longer before it's strong enough to use. Don't give up hope, just discard, feed, and repeat. So on day three, we're going to discard three quarters of this mixture, and we're going to feed it 50 grams or half a cup each of flour and lukewarm water, and we're gonna continue feeding this exact same way every single day until it rises and falls predictably. [00:03:28] That means it's gonna climb your jar and then fall back down. Um, it usually takes about seven days. I've built my sourdough feedings into my daily routine, and Frankenstarter 2, son of Frankenstarter, AKA Baby, gets fed with my pets and my chickens in the morning. It starts to become very easy to treat your sourdough starter like it's a living thing, and that's because it is. [00:03:53] And if thinking of your starter like it's a little pet helps you take consistent care of it, then by all means, [00:04:00] anthropomorphize away. Now, this isn't the only way to obtain a starter. You might receive a division of a starter from a friend or neighbor, or purchase a piece of the starter from your favorite local bakery, or perhaps purchase a legacy starter from a famous location in California or Alaska. [00:04:16] The Mother Earth News store actually sells a dehydrated starter. It's really fun and simple to make your own starter at home, but sourdough starters invariably get more resilient and taste better with age. Plus, sharing an existing starter enables you to achieve more reliable bakes more quickly, and it connects you to a larger community and history of bakers. [00:04:38] And now that you have your starter, let's talk about how to feed it. Like I keep saying, your starter is alive, and like all living things, it needs the proper nutrition to grow and thrive. The best advice that I've heard from other bakers has been to feed your starter the same stuff that you bake with. [00:04:52] My go-to sourdough recipe, the country bread recipe from the Tartine Bakery, uses a mixture of bread flour and whole wheat flour. So [00:05:00] I just mix up a big container of that so that it's easy to do my feedings. The sourdough book featured in our store, which is written by John and Jessica Moody, is full of 100% whole wheat recipes, and unsurprisingly, their starter is fed with 100% whole wheat flour. [00:05:15] It's generally not recommended to feed all-purpose flour regularly because of the lower protein content, but if you're out of bread flour and you're out of whole wheat flour, it's better to feed all-purpose than to not feed at all So let's talk about how to feed your sourdough starter. There are basically two different ways to feed your starter, the discard method and the non-discard method. [00:05:34] Let's talk about the discard method first. In my experience, this is the method with the least variables that produces the most consistent results, which makes it ideal for new starters, like the one we just made, and new bakers who don't know what a healthy starter should look like. The discard method involves removing and discarding most of your established starter, then adding back flour and water to feed the remaining yeast. [00:05:59] The [00:06:00] reason we discard is to minimize the amount of new flour needed to feed the amount of yeast that we have. The larger your starter is when it needs to be fed, the more flour required to keep it from starving. So when you divide and discard a portion of your starter before feeding, you use less flour for that feeding I'm just gonna[00:07:00] [00:07:26] Now, if you don't bake a whole loaf of sourdough bread very often, this can seem like an extremely wasteful method, but there are a few ways to reduce the waste of discard. The first is probably the easiest, and that is to keep your sourdough starter small and feed it a large amount of flour to increase its size the night before you bake. [00:07:43] I discard three-quarters of my starter and feed about two heaping tablespoons each of flour and water daily. This means I'm throwing away a small amount of flour and adding in a small amount of flour. The second way to reduce waste from sourdough discard is to cook with it. I use my sourdough discard in [00:08:00] slurries to thicken gravies and soups. [00:08:01] I've added it to any number of quick bread recipes and muffins. I make sourdough crackers and overnight sourdough pancakes. You can collect your discard for a week in the refrigerator for larger recipes. Sourdough discard is also compostable or can be diluted with water and thrown directly under plants. [00:08:20] The other sourdough feeding method is the no-discard method. A lot of folks call this the lazy sourdough method, and honestly, there is a lot less labor involved. However, this method kind of requires a knowledge of how sourdough starter behaves, how it looks when it needs to be fed, and how much you should feed a starter based on how big it is. [00:08:39] That being said, this is all something that you get a feel of over time, and in addition to being less labor-intensive, this method can produce a more pronounced sour flavor that some folks really enjoy. The no-discard method is benefited by a larger jar because the starter will rise higher if there's more in it, and basically, when feeding time comes, you mix in your flour and water, and that's, [00:09:00] um, that's the whole step. [00:09:01] If you notice that your starter is consuming the flour too fast, that is, when you get to it the next day, there's a layer of dark liquid at the top, or if your starter, um, it's good to smell it every now and then. If it smells a little more hoochie than sour, then you know you should be feeding it more If you have a pretty solid experience of maintaining a sourdough starter and you bake fairly regularly, the no discard method will probably work very well for you. [00:09:28] It's possible to get a little out of control with how much starter you have on your hands, but then you can turn that discard into recipes from method number one. Now, how often should you feed your sourdough starter? For both methods, it's best to feed every day. If you're not going to be baking, it's okay to feed your starter, cover it tightly, and set it in the fridge for a nap. [00:09:50] In the summer when I'm very busy and baking less, my starter often lives in the fridge. I'll take it out, feed it, and return it to the fridge once a week. A healthy starter can also survive [00:10:00] a few weeks in the fridge if you're on vacation, but that's just not the best practice for a standard routine. Um, and you can just take it with you on vacation. [00:10:08] Sourdough starter travels well. I've put it over an ocean plane ride and it's always fine. You can also store your sourdough starter in the same jar that you started it in. Your starter is going to like the same temperatures that you do as a human, so if it's very hot, keep it somewhere sheltered and out of the light. [00:10:25] It got very hot this summer, so I broke out my ceramic culture jar, and I kept it mostly in the cabinet with my potatoes and other root veggies. If it gets cold, you might keep it in a warmer spot in your house. You can put it on top of your fridge or maybe in your laundry room. Mine usually lives in my office in the winter because my desktop keeps that pretty warm. [00:10:46] You can also continue to use the jar and cozy that you started it in, like this, but a regularly maintained starter will continue to thrive in a large enough screw top jar. For especially long-term storage, it's best [00:11:00] to dehydrate your starter. Spread a thin layer of mature starter over parchment paper and let it dry out in your oven at the lowest possible temperature until it's crispy. [00:11:08] If you have a dehydrator, that's even better. When you're ready to use your starter again, simply crush it up, mix it with water, and feed it like normal. That's basically what's in one of these. And while all these methods are a good practice for maintaining a starter in the long term, the best way to make sure that there's always a fed starter around is to divide it and share it with your friends and community. [00:11:29] I made this starter last November, and there's always someone in the building that I've given a division to who could replenish mine if it ever got sick and moldy, or if one of my cats knocks it off the counter. And now that we know how to start and feed our sourdough starters, I'll see you in the next video with how to bake with it

Stretch and fold your way into a perfect sourdough boule. This rustic sourdough bread recipe, written by Tabitha Alterman, is crusty and full of developed sour flavor. This sourdough bread recipe bakes up in a cast iron pan, and bakes well even in an unpredictable or uneven oven. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Alyssa Warner: This recipe for rustic sourdough bread comes from the December/January 2013 issue of Mother Earth News, and is written by regular writer Tabitha Alterman. This sourdough bowl can be made with white or wheat flour, doubles well, and is easily adaptable for an overnight rise or even frozen for future use. [00:00:19] If you're new to sourdough, her article on starter usage and maintenance is the perfect primer to broaden your sourdough horizons. Check it out in the link below. Like most sourdough recipes, this loaf has a long fermentation time and a long rest time, but that time is mostly idle. Additionally, unlike a lot of bread recipes made with commercial yeast, this recipe is not well-suited for being made in a bread machine or stand mixer. [00:00:43] Your hands are the key. So watch our hands and pay attention to how we gently move and shift the dough for maximum lift. Let's say you've never done sourdough before, and you have your first ripe starter, and you're ready to bake your bread. [00:01:00] How do you know it's ready to bake? You do a float test. So here is the ripe, fed sourdough starter that I started about eight hours ago, eight, 10 hours ago. [00:01:15] And as you can see, it's really bubbly. Now, I know that this is ready to go, but if you've never cooked with sourdough before, a great way to test it is to take a scoop and drop it in water, and if it floats like this, you're ready to go. And don't worry if it has been a little long, if it's been maybe 12, 13 hours and it's not floating anymore. [00:01:44] Just feed it another tablespoon or two of flour, give it a stir, let it rest somewhere warm for 30 minutes, and then try again. You'll be good to go. So we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna start our sourdough. Here is our leaven that we tested to make sure [00:02:00] that it has enough gases in it, that it's matured enough. [00:02:03] We're gonna make it in this bowl. Here's our warm water warmed to about 100 degrees. If it's a little bit warmer than your body temperature, that's probably about in the right place. And then our flour. We're using bread flour. You can also use a mixture of bread and whole wheat or all full wheat if you like. [00:02:22] But what we're gonna do is pour our water into our bowl. I've reserved some in this little cup to mix with our salt to add later. And then we're gonna measure out one cup of the leaven [00:02:47] It is so goopy. That is a nice mature starter there [00:02:58] Now, since we [00:03:00] started this leaven overnight, this remaining leaven is our new sourdough starter. So you can go ahead and mix this with some water and flour and put it back in your jar for the next time you're ready. So we're gonna disperse the starter In the water. We're gonna use our hands. Always use your hands [00:03:25] Every sourdough has its own unique mixture of yeasts and bacterias and happy things in there that's unique to each baker All right. And once that's dispersed and you have this really milky liquid with no lumps in it, or at least very few lumps, you can take your flour and mix it in a little bit at a time until you have a really shaggy dough[00:04:00] [00:04:00] It's okay if you lose some of your flour [00:04:08] Will get added back in as you cook [00:04:24] Now we don't have to worry about having a workable dough at the end of this step. We just wanna make sure that the flour is all wet and has contact with the water And then we're gonna let it sit for about 20 minutes since we're using white flour [00:04:51] And we'll come back to it and add a little bit of water and the rest of the salt. This period where the [00:05:00] water and the flour rest together before you add salt is called the autolyse Although you might find, if you have the time when you're cooking, that most doughs benefit from a little bit of time for the flour to get absorbed by the water. [00:05:19] Although having made this recipe before, this is a very [00:05:25] This dough is gonna need a little bit of extra water. I can feel that already All right [00:05:37] So I added about 50 grams extra water, and if it still feels a little tough At the end of the autolyse period after I've added in the salt, we'll add a little more water. We want a very shaggy and slightly sticky dough[00:06:00] [00:06:11] Okay. I'm gonna go clean this off. We'll see you in about 20 minutes. So this has been sitting for about 20 minutes, and you can see it's a lot softer, and there's a lot more, there's a lot less, oof, tackiness going on. It's just a little bit sticky, but it's not quite so goopy. So now we're gonna go ahead and add the water. [00:06:38] This water is what I reserved on the side earlier, and I put one and a half teaspoons, which is what the recipe calls for, of salt [00:06:49] Whoop. By the way, be forewarned, this is a bit of a scary step in this process. The dough is gonna look like it's coming apart and that everything is ruined and nothing is good. But it's okay. Trust the [00:07:00] process. It'll be fine [00:07:17] There we go. And now it's coming apart, and here's the scary moment where we think the dough is never coming together. All is lost. Just keep going [00:07:40] Okay, so now we have this very extremely sticky, very shaggy dough, and I know it looks wrong, but this is actually not a bad place for it to be right now. We're gonna go ahead and start the bulk fermentation process on this loaf, and what that means is every 30 minutes we're [00:08:00] gonna come back to it and we're gonna do these things called stretch and folds, and that's how we're going to add structure to our dough without really giving it any kneading. [00:08:09] What's really nice about this process is that you can have a nice high hydration dough without having to have hands that look like this all the time. We'll see you in 30 minutes for the first stretch and fold. So this dough has been resting for a little over 30 minutes. You can see it's still shaggy looking at the top. [00:08:32] And all we're going to do is we're gonna do our first stretch and fold. I'm touching this and it's really loose right now, so we're gonna start with what's called an accordion fold. So I'm gonna work with very wet hands to start. You can have a bowl that you can dip in water if you'd like. [00:08:49] And I'm going to separate the bread, ooh, from the bowl with my wet hands [00:09:00] And then I'm gonna lift it and I'm gonna stretch it and fold it over itself [00:09:18] We're gonna give the bowl a quarter turn, and then we're gonna do the same thing one more time [00:09:33] This dough is still really loose, so I'm gonna give it a third accordion fold, and then I'm gonna let it rest for another half hour and come back and see how it's doing. All right, so it's been half an hour. We're gonna do another stretch and fold. You can see the dough has more volume than it did the first time, and it's not quite as loose and stretchy. [00:09:52] So we're gonna go ahead and do a four corner stretch and fold. So we're gonna go in with wet hands, and you're gonna, [00:10:00] oof, loosen it from the side of the bowl. It's really warm in here, so this is going pretty fast. And you're gonna go in, and you're gonna grab one corner and pull it over. Give the bowl a quarter turn, grab another corner, and pull it over. [00:10:21] And we're gonna do that for all four corners. Now, be gentle with your dough. Don't let it tear, and try not to disturb the bubbles that have formed- Under the surface. And do the last one. [00:10:42] Stretch and fold and then we're gonna keep doing that for the first three hours of the bulk fermentation, and after that we can form the loaf and allow it to proof for two to four hours. So we have our dough after it's done with its [00:11:00] bulk fermentation. You see it's billowy and jiggly. It jiggles really nicely. [00:11:05] So what we're gonna do is we're gonna make sure that we have wet hands, and we're gonna turn it out onto this floured surface, and then we're gonna let it rest for 10 to 20 minutes [00:11:28] All right. Okay, so we're gonna let this take a nap for a bit. All right, so we've let this sit for about 10 minutes, and now we're gonna form it into a boule, into a circle, and we're gonna set it to rest in this prepared proofing basket. We prepared the proofing basket by putting half a cup of flour in it and just turning it until the whole thing was coated so that it won't stick.[00:12:00] [00:12:00] So the first thing you wanna do is flour your hands just a bit, and then pat this kind of into a rectangle. And then we're going to pull each corner around- So that the flower is on the outside, the flower from our surface. And we're just gonna go in a rectangle [00:12:30] There we go. And put the seam side on the bottom. And then we're going to pull this into a taut ball. So what that means is we're gonna find a place on the counter where it's not super floured so the dough has somewhere to stick, and then I'm just gonna use the edge of my hand flat, and I'm gonna pull the dough. [00:12:52] Rotate it and pull the dough [00:12:58] Most sourdough [00:13:00] makes a pretty loose dough And all of this tightening we do, all of the folding that we do during the bulk ferment Is what we do instead of kneading to give the dough structure [00:13:19] And when this is taut to your liking [00:13:29] You can take this and put it on a board for the final proofing stage, or you can put it in one of these guys, which is what we're gonna do. So turn it over [00:13:41] messy side up. And then I'm gonna take a little more flour and we're just gonna sprinkle it over the top and this helps it to not dry out while it proofs for two to four hours. All right. So we're gonna put this away and we'll see you in two hours[00:14:00] [00:14:33] Here is our finished bowl. I bake this off, believe it or not, in a toaster oven. My favorite thing about this recipe is that when you bake it, you put it inside of a cast iron pot. And that cast iron pot really holds and keeps the heat very even, so it doesn't really matter if you have a low or mid-quality oven. [00:14:56] You can also do it on a grill. Just remember, when you're done with your [00:15:00] bulk fermentation, just remember when you're done with your final proof, turn out your basket very gently and score the top using a serrated knife or a razor. I like to do a simple X like this. But you can get a little crazy with it [00:15:29] And here's the bread. This is why we stretch and fold very gently. You can see all these holes [00:15:40] It's nice and squishy Can hear it? [00:15:49] Have fun baking

Learn the secrets to fresh, delicious homemade bread every time you make it. In this workshop, April Jones shows you the tips to success on how to grind your own wheat fresh every time.

Explore skills and techniques to create hand-crafted loaves of bread that will be a hit! Follow April Jones along in this fun-filled workshop full of learning.

Most people's sourdough success stops before it starts! The starter phase creates unique challenges so learn how to make your sourdough success more sure and find answers to common questions and problems in this workshop from successful mom and veteran "sourdougher" Jessica Moody. Part 2 It's important to maintain you sourdough starter appropriately, so learn how to make sure it is ready when you want to bake. Part 3 Learn methods to remedy common issues with your sourdough starter as well as uncommon issues such as when your daughter pours salad dressing into the starter. Learn more from Jessica and John Moody's book, DIY Sourdough available now in the Mother Earth News Bookstore.

Before the holy grail of sourdough bread, your starter needs something a little simpler to get you going. Crackers are the perfect first sourdough food! But there are a few tips and tricks to successful cracker making so that you don't crack yourself up in the process. Learn how to make amazing sourdough crackers in this workshop with Jessica Moody. Part 2 Part 3

Want a mouth watering treat for special occasions that is still good for your family? Jessica's sourdough cinnamon rolls are not just delicious, they're nutritious — made with whole grains traditionally prepared via sourdough with an amazing frosting without all the refined sugars. So come learn how to make a treat that doesn't mean dietary defeat for you and your family! Part 2

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