I’m filing some old photos and drinking hot tea. January is having its cold way again, and there’s really nothing much to do outside. I wanted to make some scones to pair them with our afternoon tea, when I realized it’s been quite a while since I’ve baked some bread. The pleasure of mixing the ingredients, the joy of seeing it rise, the lovely baking smell in the whole kitchen, and oh, the crunchy crust! While I try to avoid making bread a constant presence on our table, I wouldn’t give up the good, happy moments baking it gives us, especially on cold winter days like this one.
I don’t like to precisely follow recipes, and with sourdough pretty much being a difficult math equation I never managed to solve, when I saw Beth’s no-knead country loaf on Food52, I knew I found my kind of recipe. This bread doesn’t require much attention or special techniques, and you can actually play with the ingredients any way you like. It comes with easy instructions, a lovely baking flavor, and a crunchy crust, so it actually has everything I always wanted from a loaf of bread.
I love to add savory flavors to my breads (sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, and olives are actually my favorite ones), but this time I wanted something really nourishing, so I decided to go for a combination of rye, buckwheat, and wholemeal flours enriched with seeds and nuts for a crunchy texture. I love the buckwheat bread I buy every now and then from our favorite artisan bakery, so I thought I could recreate its rich, nutty taste in my lazy, homemade version. And it actually worked.
Using whole flours is not just a matter of taste, but also a way to enrich your diet with minerals. Plain white flour doesn’t have many nutrients, and it actually needs your body’s minerals to be processed. It’s also difficult to be metabolized and burdens your system, so if you decide to have a slice of bread, a whole flour one is always the best alternative for your health.
Whole flours are rich in magnesium, manganese, copper, and phosphorus, but with fiber as well, so they are energizing and nourishing, but also help the digestive system and help regulate the sugar levels in the blood. I also added nuts and seeds for a nice texture, but also for their healthy fats, minerals, and fiber load. This bread is nutrient-dense, healthy, and so easy to make – you just need to mix ingredients and let it do its thing. The rest is magic!
No-Knead Bread with Buckwheat, Rye, Seeds and Nuts
Ingredients
- 2 cups whole-wheat flour wholemeal
- 1 cup buckwheat flour
- 1 cup rye flour
- 1 tbsp chia seeds
- 1/2 cup toasted hazelnuts
- 1/2 cup walnuts
- 1/2 cup toasted sunflower seeds
- 1 tsp instant yeast
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 &1/2 cups purified water
- *extra flour to sprinkle the working surface and bowl
Instructions
- In a large bowl combine flour, yeast, salt, nuts and seeds, then add water.
- Stir to combine and obtain a sticky dough.
- Cover the bowl with a clean towel and let the dough rise at room temperature for for 12 hours (until bubbles appear on its surface).
- Sprinkle a working surface with flour, transfer the dough on it, fold it once or twice and give it a ball shape.
- Sprinkle abundantly the bowl with flour, place the dough inside, cover with a clean towel and let it rise for two more hours (it should double its size).
- With about 20 minutes before the dough is ready, heat the oven at 220ºC/450ºF and place a cast-iron pot or a clay one into the oven, empty, to accumulate heat.
- Remove the pot from the oven, carefully transfer the dough into it, cover with a lit and bake for 30 minutes.
- Remove the lid and bake for 40 more minutes.
- Remove from the pot and let cool for a 10 minutes before slicing.
Notes
Nutrition
I love this bread!
Me too, I think it’s the best recipe for lazy homemade baking!
Awesome, Ana!
Thank you, Natalia! 🙂
What a gorgeous bread. I know very little about healthy flours and baking with them.. This recipe is a great place to start for beginners like me.
Thanks for sharing. Gorgeous photography, as always.
Cheers..
I don’t have either the patience nor the skills to work with sourdough, so this no-knead recipe with yeast is the perfect choice for me too 🙂 Thank you Aysegul, for your nice words!
This is so great, I want to try it! I have always been resistant to yeast breads so this is perfect : ) Beautiful photography as well!
Thank you Stephanie! 🙂
I’m salivating right now. I absolutely love bread and I haven’t made a rye one in a long time. The only problem is, I eat it all within days when I make it!!
I have the same problem, I could eat the whole loaf right after I take it out from the oven, especially when it’s crunchy-crusted! 🙂
Your bread looks awesome! I’ve not been brave enough to try my hand at bread making but now I have too – it looks too good to miss!
Mary
Mary, it’s so easy to make – it really worth giving a try!
This bread is so delicious! I leave in Paris so have a lot of bread available at the corner of my street but this one is by far my favorite. Your blog is amazing, we feel your love of food in every recipes and its so esthetic! well done I’m admirative
Thank you so much Jean, for your lovely compliment!
Hello, Is there a trick for getting this bread to rise?
The yeast in the recipe should do the trick 🙂
Hi Ana,
It says to leave the dough for 12 hours?? Typo? Usually it’s only half hour or so, never more than an hour. Could I substitute rye with another cup of buckwheat? Thank you, it looks so delicious.
Hi Tasha, no typo here – this bread doesn’t involve any kneading so it needs time for the raising chemistry to occur 🙂 I think it works with extra buckwheat instead of rye, but bread is always unpredictible, so I can’t tell it for sure. Let me know how it turns out should you give it a try!
I tried this bread and it wasn’t a success. I have made lots of other bread but this one seemed to have too much flour for the amount of liquid…4 cups flour to 1 1/2 cup liquid. It made a hard dough….I still let it sit for 13 hrs. Still a hard dough, had not raised at all. What can be the problem? Can anyone help me out here?
I have been making no-knead breads twice a week. Each time the result is different based on the flour I use, how old the flour is etc. Your dough sounds as if it was wayyyyy too wet. If it does not hold together, just use more flour. It needs to be somewhat sticky but not liquid. I have experimented with more or less water and I find the firmer I make the dough, the smaller the holes are but a drier dough is much easier to handle and it still super-soft when baked. I NEVER
follow recipes in baking to the T because every situation is different.
I am trying this bread tonight and let you know tomorrow how it came out!!!
Would love to read about your take on my recipe!
I agree with the last poster, there is way too little water in this recipe. I ended up adding about 3/4 cups extra to make a consistency similar to other no knead breads I’ve baked. Besides that, I love the flavor combinations here, especially with the toasted nuts and buckwheat flour.
You are so right, thank you for letting me know about the mistake. I’m glad that your experience turned this bread into a delicious one!
I would like to try the bread recipe above and read through the comments.
Did you alter the recipe to have more liquid or should I add 3/4 cups more? 🙂
Thanks!
Kim
Hi Kim, I updated the recipe with the correct quantities, no need to add extra water 🙂
My wasn’t a success…I followed everything thing exactly and the dough never rose, never had air bubbles, and rolling into a ball wasn’t happening. The dough was so liquid-y that when I poured it on to the heavily floured surface it wouldn’t hold any shape nor could I fold it or pick it up to even put in the bowl to rise. I had to just scoop it off the counter multiple times to just get in the bowl. And is 1/4 tsp yeast correct? I tried this recipe because many had success with it so I guess it’s operator error! 🙁
So sorry to hear it wasn’t a success! Sometimes it’s the yeast quality that doesn’t let the dough rise. Maybe you can try again with a different label, I am sure it will work!
I don’t have a cast iron pot or clay pot , can I use bread pans instead. And what is the purpose of closing the pot?
Cast iron or clay maintain a constant and evenly distributed temperature inside the pot, but a bread pan would do just fine! Closing the pot helps to develop a nice crust. I hope this helps 🙂
What a hearty, earthy loaf this made! I followed the recipe with the exception of add-ins that I didn’t have. I added chia, raw pumpkin seeds and chopped walnuts. I had some texture doubts based on how the dough looked after 12 hours…no bubbles and kinda “meh”. It seemed too loose to form a ball. BUT… I wasn’t going to give up until tasting the finished loaf. Glad I persisted because it turned out just great! I am new to working with the all whole grain/seed dough. I think that my doubt was just due to the differences between white/wheat flour and these whole products. Thanks for the recipe! I am going to make some vegan corn and potato chowder to serve with it!
Thank you for this recipe! I don’t have a cast-iron or clay pot at the moment and I love making smaller loaves, so I divided the dough into 4 loaves and put them in the oven at 220 degrees celsius on a regular sheet pan with a little dish of hot water to get it nice and crusty and left them in there for about 35 minutes and they came our real nice! A lovely recipe <3
Little loaves if freshly baked bread – sounds lovely! Thank you for your feedback, really happy you enjoyed the recipe!