No-Knead Masala Bread

No-Knead Masala Bread is made with whole wheat flour and Indian spices. The base recipe is from Artisan Bread in 5 (ABin5). I made it as a baguette as well as a loaf.

Choose from some more whole wheat breads like no knead olive bread, whole wheat loaf, light bread.

I have been making No-knead whole wheat bread for a long time now from the New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book. Initially the recipe didn’t turn out as great as I expected and after some tweaking I realized that whatever whole wheat flour I used, the water content was not enough, and the dough was always too dry.

I assume that the whole wheat flour available in the US has a different moisture content than the Indian variety. Well for a novice like me, this reason sounded plausible enough. After a few trials and errors, where I adjusted both milk and water quantity little by little, I found that now the bread was reasonably good.

I also experimented by adding some Indian Masala (spices) to the dough while giving it the initial mix. I have shaped the dough differently, once in a loaf pan and the other time as a free-form baguette.

Print Recipe

No-Knead Masala Bread

No-Knead Masala Bread is made with whole wheat flour and Indian spices. The base recipe is from Artisan Bread in 5 (ABin5). I made it as a baguette as well as a loaf.

Prep Time5 minutes mins

Cook Time1 hour hr

Proofing Time3 hours hrs 30 minutes mins

Total Time4 hours hrs 35 minutes mins

Course: Baking, Bread, Breakfast

Cuisine: Vegetarian

Keyword: Bakery, eggless, Toast

Servings: 1 bread loaf

Ingredients

• 1 cup water lukewarm
• 1 cup milk lukewarm
• ½ tbsp instant yeast
• 1 tbsp salt
• ¼ cup honey
• 2½ tbsp olive oil
• 3⅓ cup whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp turmeric powder optional
• 2 tsp cumin seeds optional
• ⅛ cup dried fenugreek leaves optional

Instructions

• Mix the yeast, salt, honey and oil water and milk in a lidded (not airtight) food container. Mix in the remaining dry ingredients (along with Indian spices if you are making masala bread) without kneading. You can use a wooden spoon or a heavy-duty stand mixer. If you are not using a machine, you may need to use wet hands to incorporate the last bit of flour.
• Cover (not airtight) and allow to rest at room temperature until the dough rises and collapses (or flattens on top), approximately 2 hours. The dough can be used immediately after the initial rise, though it is easier to handle when cold. Refrigerate the container of dough and use over the next 5 days.
• On the baking day, grease a loaf pan (8½ X 4½ inch). Using wet hands, scoop out the dough. This dough is pretty sticky, and often it’s easiest to handle with wet hands. Quickly shape into a ball by stretching the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go. Elongate the ball to form an oval loaf. Drop the loaf in the prepared pan.
• Cover with plastic wrap ad allow to rest for 90 minutes. In the meanwhile pre-heat the oven to 170 °C. Before baking, flour the top of the loaf and slash, using the tip of a serrated bread knife. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes until deeply browned and firm.
• Remove from the pan and allow to cool completely before slicing; otherwise you won’t get well-cut sandwich slices. If the loaf sticks, wait 10 minutes and it will steam itself out of the pan.

Notes

1. You can use dry active yeast, I have used instant as that’s what I am most comfortable using.
2. I use olive oil in most of my baking, you can use any oil of your choice.
3. You can also use room temperature water and milk instead of lukewarm.
4. For making Masala Bread, you can add 1 teaspoon of turmeric powder, 2 teaspoons of cumin seeds and some dried fenugreek leaves (kasuri methi) in step 1.
5. Recipe adapted from ABin5
6. Refer book for detailed technique on storing, refrigerating, etc of the dough.
7. Since I use a microwave/convection oven to bake, I don’t have a broiler tray for steam and hence use alternative method given in the book.