booking success, bread failure

First, let me talk about happy things.

I'm jubilantly sitting through another classless day at work because...I recently took time off from work and spent it travel-planning at home. At the end of the month, students have spring break, but teachers are required to come to school anyway. It's a painfully dull two weeks if you stick around...so fuck that! I'm taking paid leave and visiting my mom in Taiwan. The icing on the cake is this: it will be FREE! I've got airline mileage to spare, and my mom is house-sitting some kind of mansion for her friend at the moment. Very excited about this, as the free flight and housing gives me a lot of leeway to spend more in-country. Not too long after, I'm going to Singapore, Vietnam, and Cambodia for Golden Week. It'll be the usual limited-vacation whirlwind tour. Yay!

Okay, now on to sad things.

If you're any kind of foodie, you've gotten wind of Lahey's no-knead bread, recently made famous by the NYT's Mark Bittman. As I understand it, the main points are: looong, slow first proofing (replaces kneading), plus baking in a dutch oven (mimics hearth oven and also crisps the crust under the bread's own moisture) equals amazing bread. I decided to give it a try, but not without a handful of caveats:

1. I'm using my sourdough starter instead of store-bought yeast.
2. The only covered bakeware I have is a pyrex bowl with lid.
3. I only have my all-in-one Japanese microwave/toaster/oven. It's barely big enough for the pyrex, let alone a dutch oven. It also only goes up to 200C/392F, whereas most no-knead recipes call for 450F or higher if your oven can manage.

I guess...I like a challenge?

I actually used Breadtopia's modification for guidance and switched in a cup of whole wheat. I probably should have stuck to all white bread flour for my first try, though...but what can I say, I'm ambitious. The first proofing went well enough, but I think my dough was quite a bit wetter and stickier than it should have been. I had a gooey time trying to shape it into a ball for the second proofing. I then went off this recipe from Sourdoughs International, sort of, and put the dough in the pyrex into a cold oven and baked it from there.

In the end, the bread came out really nice on top, but undercooked and stuck to the pan on the bottom. I think this is because the "oven," with it's upper heating element, is so small that the heat can't adequately get through to the bottom of the pyrex bowl. I've actually had this problem baking brownies, but cookies and other small items turn out fabulous. The bread is also really, really dense...which is probably from the added wheat and excess moisture in the dough, plus the cold kitchen environment (needed a longer second rise, maybe...but a girl has to sleep). The taste is pretty good, though, and I can say that the bread is incredibly filling. :)

Now I'm trying to figure out how I can get the heat to penetrate the bottom of the bowl. I'll also save my next attempt for a weekend, when I'll have more time to play with rising times. 頑張らなくちゃ!

[pictures of bread brick to come here, currently posting via e-mail at work]