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Overnight white bread

A no knead recipe for white bread
Prep Time10 mins
Cook Time45 mins
Total Time12 hrs 55 mins
Course: Breakfast, Lunch, Supper
Cuisine: Norwegian
Keyword: crisp, No-knead, soft crumb, white bread
Servings: 1 Bread

Equipment

  • Mixing bowl
  • Kitchen scale
  • Heatproof kettle with a lid

Ingredients

Dry ingredients

  • 500 g normal wheat flour for baking
  • 1/4 tbsp yeast
  • 1 good pinch of salt

Wet ingredients

  • 400 g  water
  • 1 tbsp of malt extract

Instructions

Day 1

  • Before you go to bed at night, measure up your ingredients and mix it all together in a bowl.
  • Wait 10 minutes and mix again
  • Cover the bowl and let it stay on your kitchen bench (normal room temperature) for 12-18 hours. 

Day 2

  • Flour your working surface and flip the bowl over it to let your dough out.
  • Stretch the dough out into a flat square shape
  • Fold the corners of the dough towards the center, like an envelope.
  • Flip the dough over so the folds are on the bottom side.
  • Roll the dough between your hands (without turning the dough upside down) to tighten the gluten net and make a round shape. Don't worry if the shape is not perfect, you will have good bread anyways.
  • take one sheet of greaseproof paper and lift your dough onto it.
  • grab the four corners of the greaseproof paper and lift it back into the bowl and cover it.
  • Now turn on your oven to maximum heat and let the dough sit for 1 hour and 30 minutes to rest.
  • About one hour before you are going to bake, pop your iron pot into the oven.
  • Open the oven and take out the hot pot. Place this side by side with the dough and take the lid of the pot. Now make sure that you use mittens for this, your pot is blistering warm.
  • Now grab those four corners of your backing paper and lift the sheet with the dough from your bowl and over to the iron pot.
  • Take a small clunk of water (1/4 DL) and pour it into the pot before you close the lid.  Now, set the whole bowl back into the oven and let it bake for 30 minutes.
  • Then take the lid off and let it brown for another 15 minutes. But this time turn the heat down to 200 degrees Celsius.
  • Now when the bread is baked and you have the crust you want you to take the bread out and let it cool before you try it. Yep, I know it's hard but it will stay moist and juicy for a lot longer if you let it. Enjoy!

Notes

Sliced bread and butterNow, this dough has 80% water in it. This will make it a bit tricky to work with so here is an alterntive method for folding the dough. Get yourself a bowl of water that you dip one hand in. Now hold the bowl with your dough in one hand (the dry one), and slide one hand (wet hand) along the side of your bowl with your palm facing towards the middle of your bowl. Now, grab your dough, lift it up and stretch it. Then put the flap in your hand on top of the dough on the other side of your bowl. Rotate the bowl one-quarter and repeat at least 3 more times. Remember to wet your working hand between each fold.
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