Bread Advice

I’ve made many breads and bread-like things, but my favorite is no-knead bread. Why knead when you don’t have to? My no-knead source is Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. You can find the basic recipe online; see my master recipe and healthy recipe pages for more details.

Most of the variants I make from the book involve substituting a cup of something else for a cup of white flour in the basic recipe: a cup of rye flour (and some caraway seed) for rye bread; half a cup of rye flour and half a cup of whole wheat flour for “peasant” bread. Some involve shape, like slathering a lump of the basic dough into a flat rectangle on parchment paper, letting it rise while the oven is preheating to 450°, dusting it with flour, baking for 20 minutes, and presto, ciabatta!

Other fast shapes include naan, pizza, baguettes, and za'atar bread, a nice flatbread with za'atar (spice mix) and olive oil.

This chapter also includes several traditional-knead breads, some non-bread accoutrements for your bread (like cornstarch wash), and an index of which Artisan Bread in 5 breads you can make with which doughs.

KitchenAid has a page about the process of making bread in a stand mixer. To summarize: mix the dry ingredients in the warmed mixer bowl using the dough hook, then slowly add the water (other wet ingredients weren’t mentioned), all at a speed of 2. On the no-knead front, the Artisan Bread in 5 folks recommend a stand mixer for their drier doughs, such as their holiday book white bread dough (with weights), but say to use a paddle rather than a dough hook for their wetter doughs. (Personally, I prefer the dough hook even for their wet doughs.) They aren’t picky about the order of wet vs. dry ingredients unless they include vital wheat gluten.