Captain’s log, supplemental: No-Knead Loaf Pan Bread

Adjusting some ingredient amounts and using a loaf pan makes our original no-knead bread faster rising and sandwich friendly. Recipe below.

WE’VE BEEN BINGE WATCHING STAR TREK, specifically The Next Generation. There’s just something comforting about the ensemble cast’s interactions and development, the late ’80s hairstyles of the future (and late ’80s views of future technology—who knew iPads would still be with us?), the creative technobabble…

Steeped in this fun alternate universe, when we started thinking about making a loaf pan version of our no-knead bread, I wondered aloud if it needed its own post, or if it was merely a “captain’s log, supplemental.”

I opted to make it its own post. We’ve been baking bread here a lot lately. Partly out of necessity—getting a decent bread of any kind from a store is a challenge these days, at least for us. And partly because, like bingeing on familiar old TV shows, there is something comforting about mixing a handful of simple ingredients together, giving the yeast time to do its thing and then producing a beautiful bread.

The no-knead bread Marion posted here back in May has become our go-to loaf. It requires little real effort, but lots of rising time—20 hours in all. And although it looks and tastes like an artisan loaf you would pay good money for, its round shape and the resulting oval slices aren’t exactly sandwich friendly.

Apparently a number of others felt the same. A search for “no-knead loaf pan bread” turned up several versions. The ingredients for most of them were pretty much the same as our no-knead recipe: flour, yeast, salt, liquid—almost always just water. But those are pretty much the foundation ingredients for most breads, right? By varying the amounts of various ingredients and baking it in a loaf pan, it became something different, worthy of its own post.

Greatly increasing the yeast-to-flour ratio made the dough rise much faster—six or so hours total (with the option of letting it sit overnight in the fridge, which will deepen the flavor and up the structure). The finished bread was also lighter, airier and a little softer. And the loaf pan gave it a sandwich-friendly squarish shape. As we usually do with our original no-knead bread, we add buttermilk and olive oil to the recipe, replacing some of the water.

Also, while you can go from flour to a finished bread in about seven hours (with almost all of that just letting the dough do its thing while you do whatever else), giving it extra time produces a better tasting bread. Letting the dough rest in the fridge at least overnight will really develop the flavor; we let the most recent loaf spend two days in the fridge, purely for scheduling reasons, and it’s the best one yet. Some recipes say you can keep the dough in the fridge for up to two weeks.

This new bread won’t replace the other in our rotation. But now we’ve got two recipes we like and can easily bang out, and that’s pretty comforting. Want to try it? To quote Captain Jean-Luc Picard, “Make it so.”

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No-knead Loaf Pan Bread

A faster-rising, sandwich-friendly version of our original no-knead bread.

Servings 1 loaf

Equipment

• 4x8 loaf pan
• dough or bench scraper

Ingredients

• 3 cups flour plus extra for dusting (see Kitchen Notes)
• 1-1/8 teaspoon instant yeast
• scant 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup buttermilk (optional—see Kitchen Notes)
• 4 teaspoons olive oil (optional—see Kitchen Notes)
• room temperature water
• a pat of butter for greasing the pan

Instructions

• Combine flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Stir with a fork, whisk or spoon to thoroughly mix them together.
• In a measuring cup, combine buttermilk, olive oil and enough room temperature water to measure 1-1/2 cups total (you can also use just 1-1/2 cups water).
• Slowly pour liquid into the dry ingredients, stirring with a large wooden spoon or spatula to create your dough. Carefully stir, especially checking the bottom, to make sure no dry flour remains.
• Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set aside in a draft-free place. Let the dough rise, undisturbed, for 5 hours.
• Note: At this point, you can proceed to the next step now and be baking it in about an hour. But we recommend putting the plastic-covered bowl in the fridge overnight—or even longer, up to two weeks. This will give the dough time to develop more flavor and a sturdier structure, making it less soft white bread in nature. When you're ready to continue, take it out of the fridge and proceed with the next step.
• Butter the inside of your loaf pan and dust it with flour. Set aside.
• Turn the dough out on a lightly floured surface (I used a nonstick silpat and was glad I did). A flexible dough scraper or steel bench scraper can be quite helpful in wrangling the dough. The dough is quite sticky at this point, but don’t worry.
• Flour your hands and the top of the dough, and gently shape it into a rectangle about 8 inches by 12 inches. Gently is key here—you don’t want to squash the bubbles that have formed inside. Fold 1/3 of the dough to the center, then the remaining 1/3 over on it, making it roughly loaf pan-sized shaped. Using your scraper, free it from the work surface and place it in the loaf pan, folded side down.
• Cover the pan with a clean dish towel and set aside, again in a draft-free place, and let it rise for at least 1 hour, preferably longer. If your dough came from the fridge, let it rise about 1-1/2 to up to 5 or 6 hours to come more to room temperature and to rise more. That 5 to 6 hours has now become our standard.
• Preheat oven to 425ºF with a rack in middle position.
• Using a sifter or fine-mesh sieve, lightly dust the top of the loaf with more flour.
• Bake until it is golden brown, about 25 – 30 minutes. Not sure if it’s done? Tap the top of the loaf—if it sounds hollow, it’s done.
• Turn bread out onto a cooling rack and let cool completely before slicing and eating.

Kitchen Notes

What kind of flour? How do I measure it? We just used unbleached white flour, but you can substitute some or all of it with wheat flour, if you like. To measure flour, don’t scoop it up with your measuring cup. That will pack it too densely and you’ll have too much. Instead, use a spoon to spoon flour into your measuring cup. And if you haven’t used the flour recently, first stir it up with a spoon to loosen it a bit. If you prefer to weigh your flour, 1 cup weighs about 4-1/4 ounces or 120 grams.

Why buttermilk and olive oil? Buttermilk gives a nice tang to the finished bread. It doesn’t taste like buttermilk, but it reacts with the other ingredients to add a good deal of flavor. The olive oil adds flavor as well, but more important, it makes the bread more tender inside and more crisp on the outside.

No buttermilk? Mix 1-1/2 teaspoons of white vinegar or lemon juice with enough milk to measure 1/2 cup. Stir, then let stand for 5 minutes.