I was reading earlier about “do-nothing bread”. I found it slightly amusing to see it characterized as something “extreme” or “revolutionary” because it’s not that different from how I make most of my breads–basically anything with relatively lean dough, timeframe permitting-- because it just seems common sense in many ways and because it’s convenient. I usually do something like 12-16 hours, from afternoon or evening (depending what’s convenient and the temperatures and the type of dough) until the following morning (at which point I either shape and bake or refrigerate for later depending what it is). All summer long I’ve been making breads with 1% starter inoculations, now that it’s cooler at night usually I’ll bump it up to more like 2% for the same breads on the same timeframe (I may tweak it depending on the dough and how long I want to ferment it for).
What I don’t get is how the dough develops well without handling. Or does it not, but the trade off is considered acceptable? I don’t see how you could get as much air in your dough without a little gluten development early on. I used to often make dough with almost no kneading, and no folding at all, and let it sit overnight and then shape and bake it and it was perfectly great, but once I figured out that including a few folding sets in the first few hours of fermentation made nicer dough and allowed me to do more interesting things with it I started doing that every time. It only takes like ten seconds per set, so let’s be generous and say doing four sets adds almost a minute to the prep time–hardly a lot of extra work for a big result.
What am I missing? Is the seemingly extremely high hydration key somehow? But the conventional wisdom would seem to indicate wetter doughs need MORE gluten development not less? (I don’t keep bread flour on hand, so i’d have to lower it considerably anyway.) And if do nothing bread is already so great, why isn’t do-an-extra-60-seconds-of-work-to-develop-gluten-and-then-do-nothing bread even better…? Though I admit, being able to mix and walk away immediately would occasionally come in handy, like when I’m not able to get started till late at night, for example…
Is it a bit of a gimmick, or is there truly some good methodology behind it that’s just sometimes misunderstood or mischaracterized?
All gluten needs, to be able to form properly, is hydration + [enough] time. If you alter any of those things then in order to bring all the elements of dough making back into sync then the gluten formation must be sped up through kneading and/or folding.
If you use a large amount of starter then the fermentation will be quick and then the gluten wouldn’t have time to form. If the hydration is on the low side then it would need a far longer time to form properly. However, if you use a small amount of starter, high enough hydration and have plenty of time then you don’t need to do much. Any folds or kneading you do add will just be an added bonus. However folding also plays another role getting a more even ferment. Takes the food to the yeast or vice versa. So even with “do nothing breads” getting at least one fold in during fermentation will be beneficial.
P.s. folding and kneading, while its primary function is gluten formation, also helps with adding more air into the dough.
Thank you for the thoughtful response. I found a couple youtube videos of Yohan Ferrant himself demonstrating and discussing. The audio quality is poor, his accent is quite thick (no judgement, learning languages is f–ing hard!) and he clearly struggles to find the best English terms for things often, and there’s a lot of missing context, so it’s not the most easily parsed source of information, but it’s enough for me to get the sense that he definitely knows what he’s doing–even if not all his many imitators fully do.
I’m intrigued enough to experiment with more extra long fermentations and minimal handling techniques.
If you were going to try to adapt something similar using American all purpose flour instead of bread flour, do you or anyone else have any thoughts on what a more appropriate hydration level would be? I’m thinking based on my experience I wouldn’t want to push it beyond 80% and perhaps 70%ish might do better…
I’ve seen that video @bakerman789 and while it is informative I don’t think we see the complete class so there will be a filling in of the gaps to be done.
For an all white flour sourdough it can be done with 70% hydration. Teresa Greenway bases her San Francisco Sourdough on the Do Nothing Bread. The recipe goes something like this…
500g bread flour (or AP flour)
350g water
10g salt
20g starter (refreshed and matured)
Mix the dough.
Bulk Ferment up to 16 hours (but i’ve yet to be able to bulk ferment for longer than 12-14 hours as there will be variables, such as your starter and temperature, so watch the dough and not the clock - also she’s very specific about temperature, but I can’t remember what it was, and I have no way of temperature control for the dough).
Give the dough one set of folds. So if you start the night before then giving it a fold in the morning will be fine.
Shape.
Final Proof for 1.5 to 2 hours.
Bake.
That is the gist of it. I’m sure it’s enough for you to experiment with. I look forward to results. If you get this just right then it’s a very tasty bread with minimal hands on time.
Hmm, that recipe looks very familiar to me (except I would usually use less starter and I’ve been doing 3-4 folds in the first few hours)!
Do you think there’s something key in waiting so long to do any folds? Is that an important part then of what makes these minimal handling formulas work well…?
Thanks! I’ll have to play around with this a little bit more soon…
I’m not too familiar with the specifics. As to when you do the folds I don’t think it’s written in stone. Just one set of folds midway or whenever you can. She based this off the Do Nothing Bread with an aim to replicate San Francisco Sourdough or her version of. It’s basically almost no handling using time and hydration to do most of the work with one set of folds and a shaping. That’s all the hands on time. When you get it just right it’s delicious! You have seen the video so the concept isn’t new to you. Takes a little getting used to, to get it just perfect, but when it goes well the results are excellent.
P.s. I think it was Teresa who made that video you have seen.
I made something similar to the recipe you posted the other day. An issue I found for me is that doing coil folding first thing in the morning deflated the very slack dough quite a bit, and I had to wait well over an hour and a half for it to inflate again to where i felt comfortable shaping it. I kind of like having dough ready to shape first thing in the morning, and this ended up slowing that down a little and the bread wasn’t ready till after lunchtime. It had a beautiful crumb, airy but well distributed with no excessively large holes. The loaf was a little flatter than similar loaves I’ve made with several folds near the beginning of the rise, but I also proofed it longer than I meant to so I can’t tell how much of a part that played.
This is interesting. It’s gotten me out of my rut. And made me appreciate long rises more than ever. It really is the most convenient and the most forgiving way to make bread, without even getting into nutrition or flavor.
Thanks again for sharing your knowledge and experience.
I think it was about 12-13 hours at 4% inoculation, with the starter cold from the fridge (I give it food right before it goes into the fridge which I gues not everyone does). This time of year especially I could use less starter and let it go slower, but I wanted it to be ready first thing in the morning and got a late start on it, and it was a cool(er) night. ~15 hours has usually been what’s most convenient for me recently schedule-wise so that’s usually what I aim for at like 1-3% starter depending on the bread and on how warm the nights are. I’d like to experiment with longer rises though.
Yes, I have been doing something much along that schedule for most lean doughs–however I had been tending to fold 3-4 times prior to going to bed rather than once!
But last night I did something very similar to what you posted. I used 500g AP (I usually prefer to use a touch of whole grain with it but had run out and couldn’t take time to fire up the Nutrimill), 10g salt, 350g water, and 6g refrigerated starter (was going for 5g, but scooped too much and then just went with it). Mixed thoroughly at about 4pm, did some coil folding at about 8:30 maybe (it was so slack I folded it a couple of times, until it was resisting stretching under its own weight anymore), then left it for about 17 hours until about 9 in the morning after I got back from dropping my kid at school. I just shaped and proofed it flat on a piece of parchment for a little over an hour, then slashed and baked on a preheated metal tray with steam.
I was really intrigued to see how well it worked with only one folding. I may have been making extra work for myself in some cases! I’m definitely inspired to do more with longer rises and less folding…
Whaddaya know: I started out a skeptic and now I’m virtually preaching the gospel!
