No Knead Sourdough

––
The chemistry and age-old art of history's most famous bread

BY MADDY GLOTFELTY

Personal Commentary

Sourdough is the world’s first leavened bread and is said to have stemmed from as far back as
the ancient Egyptians. It was likely discovered as an accident when wild yeast managed to become
incorporated into bread dough on accident, but whether purposeful or not it has become among the
best known breads today, and has played a spectacular role throughout history. Its general simplicity
and taste has caused it to travel throughout time on wagons, overseas, and across continents. My
personal sourdough starter can be traced back to the wife of the first mayor of Alaska, and the
richness in history is reflected in its richness in taste: a taste that I was fortunate enough to be
introduced to at a young age and have enjoyed time and again. It is a taste akin to home for those that
make it for their families, and always welcome in any meal. This sourdough recipe is unique in the
fact that it doesn’t use mechanical movement, meaning kneading, but rather lets the bread do all the
work and subsequently have a more delicious taste and aroma. Always a favorite, and never less than
exactly what you are looking for, this is a recipe for anyone with taste buds and a desire to eat
something delicious.

Recipe - No Knead Sourdough ● Take Dutch Oven out of oven

and score dough with knife
Equipment: ○ Lift using parchment paper
● 4 to 6 quart Dutch Oven with lid and place in Dutch Oven
● High temperature parchment ○ Put lid back on Dutch Oven
paper ○ Place back inside of oven
● Large mixing bowl ● Bake 20-25 minutes or until
● Measuring cups slightly golden brown then
● Kitchen towel take lid off Dutch Oven and
● Sharp knife lower heat to 450 F
● Kitchen scale ● Bake for an additional 10-15
● Oven minutes until well browned.
Let cool, serve, and enjoy!
Ingredients:
 ● 113g flour, 113g water (to feed
sourdough starter)
● 520g Bread Flour
○ (I suggest King Arthur Baking
Company, 12.7% protein content)
● 2 teaspoons salt
● 358g water
● ⅓ cup sourdough starter
Recipe Steps:
● Twelve hours before mixing your
dough, add 113g flour and 113g warm
water to the sourdough starter and
combine, leave it on the counter, and make
sure it doubles in size within 6 hours.
● Weigh flour and place in a large
bowl and combine 358g water and ⅓ cup
sourdough starter in a small bowl using a
wooden spoon. Combine both.
○ (Should be a thick, heavy,
sticky dough)
● Do first set of stretch and folds
and then let rest for 15 more
minutes
○ With wet hand pull the
dough from one side
upward then fold it onto
itself, quarter turn bowl
○ Repeat process for 30
seconds
○ Flip over dough in bowl
● Let dough rest for 8-12 hours at
room temperature
○ Place a damp kitchen
towel over it during this
time.
● Check dough
○ It should have risen,
which is cool :)
○ Do a test to make sure it
has risen, like lightly
Tips:
● Use the starter slightly after
peak, usually 12 hours after
the sourdough was fed is about
the right time because the
yeast is no longer growing and
has lowered a little bit. This
will ensure rising bread.
● Highly suggested to use bread
with a high flour content
● If you want to add additional
ingredients (nuts, berries) do
so just before the second set of
stretching.
Trouble-Shooting:
● Overproofed, dough feels
overly runny after the 8-12
hour rest period
○ Beware of over proofing
(proofing is the technical term
for the period of rest for the
dough, when it rises) The
dough is much more likely to
overproof if it is hot out. Over
proofing can also happen
when ingredients are measured
wrong.
● Underproofed, bread feels
gummy and dense with big
holes
○ This occurs when it wasn’t
allowed to rise long enough or
the sourdough starter wasn’t
healthy. Make sure the
sourdough starter is healthy
before making bread.
● Not rising
○ Probably sourdough starter
was not healthy, make sure
 poke it with your finger you feed the starter enough
and see if it returns to and that it nearly doubles in
shape at all, if not let it size in six hours after being
rest longer. fed.
○ Line a Dutch Oven with
parchment
○ Second set of stretch and
folds and lift dough into
the bowl with parchment
on the inside
■ Repeat step five
but with 30
seconds break in
between each
stretch and
quarter turn
○ Place in the refrigerator
for one hour, uncovered
and preheat the oven to
500F with Dutch Oven
inside, lid on.

Experimental Design

The ingredient being altered in this recipe is the flour. I used three different combinations or
types of flour in my experiment: Bread Flour (12.7% protein content), All-Purpose Flour (11.7%
protein content), and 50% dark rye flour and 50% bread flour (rye: no important protein contribution,
12.7%
bread flour 2
protein content)

My experiment was used in order to measure what effect can be seen in the bread when you
change the protein content of the flour. In this experiment the dependent variables (DV) are the
outcomes of the experiments and the independent variables (IV) is the ingredient that I changed, the
flour. The three characteristics I measured were density of bread (this was quantitative, meaning it
was measurable and is not based on human opinion), appearance of loaf (qualitative, meaning it was
based on opinion), and taste (qualitative).

Test 1 was a quantitative experiment, where the dependent variable was the density of the
bread. The thing that I changed between loaves was the protein content of the flour, otherwise known
as the independent variable. I did this experiment by cutting 2 cubes of bread from the center of the
loaf and calculating their total volume (each of them 2cm x 2cm x 2cm or 8cm3). Then measure the
total mass of each individual cube and divide the mass by the volume to get the density in g/cm3. (See
 3
results of tests below in Data Table 1 - Calculating Density of Bread in 𝑔/𝑐𝑚 ) The IV was the type
of flour used in each loaf of bread, and the DV was the density of the loaf of bread.

Test 2 and 3 were done as a peer reviewed blind taste test, meaning that one of the
participating parties (myself) knew the placement and type of each bread and what had been changed
about them, but the reviewers (peers) did not.

Test 2 was the taste test, a qualitative, blind taste test of all three breads. This was based
purely off of preference for taste, the participants did not know the difference between any bread,
much less which bread was which. I created a Google Form and laid out each type of bread, and
informed the participants what letter corresponded to each loaf.

Test 3 was very similar to Test 2 in the fact that the pre-work was almost exactly the same.
This experiment was a qualitative, peer given response of a blind test. This test was based on Images
1, 2, and 3 in order to assess what loaf looked the best or most appetizing. (See results in Figure 2)

Experimental Results

In Test 1, the data indicates that the change in the independent variable (the flour, and
subsequently the protein content of the flour) affects the density of the bread. The data indicates that
although the change is not especially substantial, the higher protein content the higher the density of
the bread. To expand on these findings, I would say that this is likely a result of more tightly aligned
gluten structure in the bread with more protein added, so the lower the protein content the lower the
density. (Represented in Figure 3)This means that the test with more protein (bread flour) produced
more gluten and the gluten strands were more tightly aligned, indicating that the density was higher.
I received this evidence from my test, which resulted in Data Table 1.

In test two, the data shows that the loaf with the best taste was bread C, the bread with bread
flour. This was qualitative, and it seems as though the protein content was not especially important to
the taste, as there appears to be no correlation. As a sub part of this test, I also asked another
qualitative question in relation to taste: which bread has the best texture? The results were close to
the same as the percent values shown for the taste test. (See results in Figure 4.) When asked about
why they chose what they did, many said that the crust was the best in the bread flour bread, likely a
result of the stronger gluten networks resulting in a greater Maillard Reaction, which would also
account for the preference of taste, as the malliard reaction alters proteins to produce more color and
aromatics. The rye bread got second best, which I was expecting to a certain extent because the
reason rye bread was a part of my experiment at all was my curiosity in regards to the taste, and the
winning reviews of such a combination. All purpose scored worst in each of these categories.

(Figure 4)

Test 3 results surprised me, because I expected the bread with the highest protein content in
the flour to have the most appreciated appearance in this qualitative test because of the Maillard
Reaction, which depends on proteins to produce a de, but most people preferred the smooth outer
shell of the all purpose flour rather than the more jagged crusts of the other loaves. (Data Table 3)
Chemical Explanation

Flour:
Flour is not gluten but rather a conglomerate of the proteins glutenin and gliadin which when
combined with water, yeast, salt, and mechanical movement (aka, stirring, stretching, or kneading)
acts to form a protein structure that we refer to as the gluten network, and subsequently through
multiple enzymatic processes and fermentation, bread.

How No-Knead Bread Works:

Rather than the techniques using kneading, no knead bread uses slow gluten development.
This lengthens the time of fermentation from 1-2 hours to 8-24 hours. When using slow gluten
development techniques you are allowing the enzymes to break the gluten proteins into smaller which
can help the gluten structure to begin to form, and at the same time the enzymatic process Zymase is
beginning to occur, which releases CO2 which gradually further aligns the gluten strands forming the
gluten structure and increasing the size of the dough. The enzymes in the bread also have longer to
react, which helps to develop more gluten and flavor in the bread.

Fermentation:
In the creation of sourdough bread, the fermentation process first occurs in the sourdough
starter and continues to happen throughout the course of the bread making. The task of the
fermentation process is to break down glucose into ethanol (an alcohol) and carbon dioxide. (The
glucose has, at this point, already been derived from the starch in the flour during the enzymatic
processes of amylase and maltase.) This process, the second half of Maltase, means that bread
fermentation can occur without oxygen, because the gas bubbles that form in bread are actually the
product of the fermentation process and produce CO2. These carbon dioxide bubbles form between
the gluten network, subsequently stretching the bread and making it less dense. This is the reason
bread rises or increases in size and this is possible because the yeast is able to extract energy from
glucose in order to form these by-products. The fermentation process breaks down bread ingredients
into acids, which is why the dough's pH tends towards being acidic, and also is a reason for such
distinctive flavors. The extent that you allow the bread to ferment and rest dictates the flavor of the
bread, the breakdown of protein, starch and lipids being a huge part of this process.

Yeast:
Yeast is a single celled organism. Commercial yeast or saccharomyces cerevisiae contribute
to the bread through the enzymes and subsequent fermentation process that occur when fed flour and
water. Sourdough starter, also called wild yeast, has many other variations of the bacteria that make it,
some speculate more than a hundred, while commercial yeast is always the same.
Flour is not gluten but rather a conglomerate of the proteins, glutenin and gliadin, which when
combined with water and mechanical movement (aka, stirring, stretching, or kneading) acts to form a
protein structure that we refer to as the gluten network.

Enzymatic processes::
Amylase - helps break down starch in the flour (this
produces sugar that the yeast uses). Breaks down
large starch chains into maltose molecules, which are
two glucose molecules bound together.
Maltase - Uses enzymes to break maltose molecules
(two bonded glucose molecules) into individual
glucose molecules
Invertase - This process in bread is specific to breads
with added sucrose (sugar ) and works because half of the byproduct of sucrose after invertase is
glucose. The other half of the by-products is fructose.
Zymase - catalyzes the fermentation of glucose into CO2 and ethanol, which is the end byproduct of
fermentation in bread
Protease- Helps to break down protein, including gluten into amino acids. (Helps keep dough from
getting too tough and be more elastic, helps with maillard reaction through the production of amino
acids. This reaction is the reason you should not over rest your bread, because with too much time this
breaks down the gluten to the extent that it harms the protein structure and therefore the structure of
the bread.)

Maillard Reaction:
Non-enzymatic browning which occurs when food is heated and proteins or amino acids react
with carbohydrates while sugars break down increasing flavor and aroma.
Rye - has significantly less protein than flour, which is why bread with rye must also have
flour. Without this, the bread would be extremely dense, and the Maillard reaction would not
occur, meaning it would be less flavorful and aromatic as well.
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