Kneadlessly Simple: Fabulous, Fuss-Free, No-Knead Breads

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Baggett, Nancy, 1943-

Kneadlessly simple: fabulous, fuss-free, no-knead breads / Nancy Baggett.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978–0–470–39986–6 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Bread. I. Title.

TX769.B1745 2009

641.8’15—dc22

2008036192

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4

Book design and typography by Ralph Fowler / rlfdesign

Acknowledgments

Many people played a part in making this book a reality. I'm grateful to every one of them.

First, a big thank-you to Justin Schwartz, my editor, and the whole Wiley team, for enthusiastically supporting this project and working diligently to ensure that it moved along smoothly and efficiently. I also greatly appreciate the efforts of publicist Gypsy Lovett, book designer Ralph Fowler, and cover designer Jeff Faust. And I'm grateful to photographer Alexandra Grablewski and food stylist Brian Preston-Campbell, who created the enticing images for the book.

Thanks also to Judith Riven, my agent, for her enthusiasm, very professional representation, and wise counsel along the way.

Many thanks to my recipe testers: My kitchen assistants Linda Kirschner and Judy Silver Weisberg helped test so many hundreds of recipes they probably dreamed about bread at night. Connie Hay also spent a number of days in my kitchen deep in dough! Home testers Sally Churgai, Erica Horting, and Dollene Targen provided valuable insights on what techniques and tips work best for the home baker and on how to make the recipes as clear and reliable as possible.

Another thank-you goes to Joe Yonan and Bonnie Benwick of the
Washington Post
Food Section, and to the staff at
Eating Well
, whose keen interest in my work on accessible no-knead bread recipes helped spawn the idea for this book.

Finally, thanks to the dozens of fine professionals whose expertise in all aspects of bread baking underpins the
Kneadlessly Simple
approach. It seems ironic that making things simple involved so much background research, but I needed to understand the chemistry and myriad practical applications of yeast baking to simplify and streamline without negatively affecting bread quality.

I am particularly indebted to gifted baker and teacher Nick Malgieri for offering some valuable suggestions for improving my manuscript. Another thank-you goes to Dr. R. Carl Hoseney for helping me understand some of the complicated chemical processes that occur during yeast baking. Here, in alphabetical order, are the other experts whose observations, theories, methods, tips, treatises, experiments, and bits of wisdom have expanded my knowledge and influenced my thinking, recipes, and method. Some of these folks I know well, others a little, others only from their work: Rose Levy Berenbaum, Emily Buelher, Bernard Clayton, Raymond Cavel, Shirley Corriher, Elizabeth David, Rosada Didier, Carol Field, Maggie Gleser, Philippe Gosselin, George Greenstein, Jeffrey Hamelman, Jim Lahey, Daniel Leader, Joe Ortiz, Beatrice Ojakangas, Craig Ponsford, Peter Reinhart, Nancy Silverton, Monica Spiller, and Daniel Wing. Besides these individuals, I must thank the dedicated people behind two wonderful Web sites, thefreshloaf.com and theartisan.net, who provide a wealth of accurate, completely free information on a whole array of yeast baking topics.

Introduction

I've loved making homemade yeast bread since my mother first let me "help" prepare her cinnamon buns when I was five. I was lulled by the peaceful, calming nature of the process and amazed and proud of what wondrously good food—fresh, warm, irresistible bread—we could create from such ordinary kitchen supplies. Until I was a teenager, my mother was a stay-at-home mom, so she gave me the gift of many leisurely hours of baking by her side. My memories of those quiet times in our farmhouse kitchen are still vivid.

Once I was grown and had my own home, I carried on my mother's baking traditions, loving the feeling of tranquility and connectedness with my past, and the extraordinary sensory experience and satisfaction of serving my family bread that came straight from our oven. Ironically, after I started writing food articles and cookbooks and honed my baking skills in professional pastry school, it was harder and harder to find the stretches of personal time my mother's old-fashioned yeast recipes required—even though I was usually working in my own kitchen! I realized that for people who spent most of their waking hours away from home, it was much more difficult to squeeze yeast baking into their lives.

Convinced that those who couldn't enjoy baking their own bread were missing out, I began experimenting with the new fast-rising yeasts that were introduced to the market in the 1980s. These launched with the claim that they needed no proofing, and that breads could now be turned out in half the usual time. By accelerating the process with lots of yeast and fast, warm rises, I found that it was indeed possible to have homemade yeast bread on the table in less than two hours—I even created a book full of recipes to prove it! But, sad to say, the hurried rises yielded loaves that were more fluff than flavor, and the off-putting muss and fuss of bread baking still remained.

For nearly two decades I set aside my yearning to make yeast baking more accessible to busy home cooks, spending most of the interim producing stories and recipes on other baking and sweets topics, as well as writing several well-received cookbooks on cookies, chocolate, and, most recently, American desserts. Like so many other people who have to snatch a few minutes here and there for bread baking, I gravitated more and more to quick breads. Yeast baking didn't seem to fit the increasingly hectic pace of life.

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