First, a confession: I am no longer the HBIC (that’s Head Baker In Charge, obviously) in our household. Last year I taught my partner how to make super easy NYT no-knead bread, and over the winter we had several bake-offs, where his loaves rose better, developed a better crust, and won handily. This was actually a sneaky move on my part to free myself of bread-baking duties, and not just the result of sloppy dough. (Or was it?) Anyway, he now makes our bread every other day or so, and makes the pizza crusts at least half the time. It’s a win-win for me: consistently awesome bread for little effort, and, because he doesn’t have a blog, I’m still taking the credit. Or I was, until this post.

But our little friendly competition isn’t even the head-to-head I want to write about. I’ve been baking no-knead bread for five or six years, using that famous recipe from Jim Lahey (popularized by Mark Bittman in the NYT). It was the first bread I learned to bake, and even though I’ve made lots of other breads I love (sourdough baguettes and sandwich bread among them), I keep coming back to the no-knead bread. It’s so easy and so consistently delicious.

But while we were traveling this winter, we stayed with a woman who made a different version of easy, no-knead bread. Her recipe yielded twice as much dough, which could keep in the fridge until ready to bake, and rose in under three hours–our breads had to rise overnight, nineteen hours–and on top of that, she could use 100% whole wheat flour and still make a big, beautiful loaf with a nice crust. We were intrigued.

We finally got around to trying this recipe last week, and I wanted to write up, side-by-side, how it compared to the old standby.

The Incumbent

We follow the recipe here, with a tweak: we’d been having a really tough time getting the dough to rise well in the humid cold of the pacific northwest, so we’ve been increasing the yeast by 1/4 tsp., and placing the bowl of dough in a basin of hot water for the long rise, and changing the water a couple times to keep it warm. We also bake it in our lidded clay pot, which pre-heats with the oven, and makes a super nice crust.

PROS: This recipe uses very little yeast (still just 1/2 tsp. after doubling it), makes the most delicious crust, and is insanely easy.

CONS: It proofs for 19 hours, so you have to plan ahead.

The Challenger

The NYT also published a quicker no-knead recipe a few years back (available here), but here’s the recipe we used, which makes two loaves:

7 C. whole wheat flour
1 1/2 Tbs. yeast
1 Tbs. salt
3 3/4 C. water

Whisk together the flour, salt and yeast in a bowl. Add the water and mix without kneading. Cover (but not airtight), and let rest at room temperature for two hours (here again we used the hot water basin method to keep it warm).

If not using immediately, refrigerate in a covered (but, again, not airtight) container and use within ten days.

When ready to bake, separate half the dough and dust with flour. On a floured surface, shape the dough into a ball by stretching the dough around the the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go. Lightly flour the ball and then let it rest for 90 minutes (40 minutes if you’re using fresh, unrefridgerated dough), loosely covered with a cloth.

Preheat the oven to 450F, and just before baking, brush the loaf with water and slash the top with a knife.

Bake on a hot stone (we bake ours in our pre-heated clay pot) for 30-35 minutes. Cool on a rack.

PROS: This dough rises quickly and uses all whole wheat flour, and can be refrigerated for days before baking.

CONS: Although it’s very good, in our tests, it wasn’t quite as tasty as the slower-rise dough, and the crust was somewhat thinner and less crisp.

The big surprise to me was that there was virtually no difference in the size of the loaves — they rose almost equally, despite such differences in flour mix and yeast content.

Our final verdict: the faster recipe yields a really good loaf, and it’s perfect when we need the bread the same day. But it’s not going to supplant our standby just yet.

What have you been baking lately? Do you have a go-to bread recipe? Let’s hear it.