No Knead Bread and Roll Recipes - The Best Blog Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What are the pros and cons of no-knead bread? ›

Pros: Develops dough without adding additional flour (as with traditional kneading). Effective method, especially with slack doughs such as baguettes. Cons: Takes time and repetitions to master. Less effective with doughs that are either stiff or high hydration — best with medium-soft doughs.

Why is my bread dense: Usually bread will be too dense when there is too much flour. Keep in mind this dough will be pretty sticky, do not add more flour than specified. Other factors that come into play are humidity and age of flour. Little yeast, long rise, sticky dough are keys to a good, light loaf.

Vinegar – I use my homemade apple cider vinegar but any vinegar will do, it helps create a better texture in no-knead bread recipes. Yeast – I use active dry yeast but instant will work too. Store your yeast in the fridge to help prolong shelf life.

Why do some bakers put vinegar in their pie crust doughs? Adding vinegar tenderizes the pastry. It inhibits gluten from forming there by making the pastry tender and flaky.

The method uses a long rise instead of kneading to align the dough's gluten molecules with each other so as to produce a strong, elastic network, resulting in long, sticky strands. The automatic alignment is possible because of the wetness of the dough, which makes the molecules more mobile.

Add Sugar

Adding sugar weakens the gluten structure, absorbs water, and eventually makes the bread lighter and softer. As a result, sugar improves the bread's taste, structure and texture. Yeast also eats up sugar to produce carbon dioxide, which raises the dough and makes bread fluffy.

Active Dry Yeast is an ideal yeast to use for artisan breads or no knead breads that require a slower rise time. It's also the preferred type of yeast for those doughs that proof in the refrigerator for extended periods of time.

No-Knead bread, especially when using the No-Touch technique is very forgiving as long as you stay between 70 and 90 percent!

Wetting the dough causes the surface to steam. Covering it traps the moisture. This partnership stops the bread from drying out on the surface in the hot air of the oven and forming a premature crust. Your bread rises more and produces a richer colour, becoming glossy on the surface.

Shaping No-Knead Bread

It's a sticky dough, and the flour will prevent it from sticking to the counter. Dust the top very lightly with flour too — just enough so your hands don't stick to it.

What happens when you dont knead bread? ›

If you don't knead your dough, your baked bread won't rise as high, and the overall texture and appearance will be dense. Properly kneaded dough promises a softer, fluffier, taller, and chewier bread.

Vinegar helps with creating a tender and moist crumb

But it's not just about the rise! Vinegar also helps in creating a tender and moist crumb in our baked goods. This is because the acidity of vinegar interferes with gluten development.

Cider vinegar, made from apples, has a faintly fruity flavor and is quite sweet compared to other types of vinegar. It's very mild and works even better in batters because there is virtually no chance of any vinegar flavor surfacing in the finished product.

Baking soda and vinegar are not only baking partners in crime, but also stellar cleaning partners, due to their chemical composition. When combined in baking recipes, baking soda and vinegar (or acid) work together harmoniously to create the leavening process of batters and doughs.

If you're interested in a less kneady physical relationship with dough, fear not. Scientifically speaking, kneading dough is little more than a means of speeding a bio-chemical process. In the presence of water, molecules of glutenin and gliadin (two proteins found in wheat) form bonds to create a gluten network.

Given a few folds a no-knead dough can be just as strong as a dough that has been kneaded. In some cases, like with doughs that contain a lot of whole grain flour, kneading can even have a negative effect on gluten development.

Kneading dough builds consistency and gives structure to raw mounds of flour and water. While some no-knead recipes deliver fluffy slices through fermentation, there's a "best way" to make crusts and breads at home.

The main disadvantage of hand kneading is that it can be a physically demanding process. Kneading dough requires repetitive motions that can cause strain on your wrists and hands. If you're not careful, you can develop carpal tunnel syndrome or other wrist injuries.