During the great (but brief) flour shortage of 2020, I ordered any flour that was available from King Arthur Flour's website. Some of the new flour types I purchased were fantastic – the Pizza Flour Blend in particular – but others, I've struggled with. The High-Gluten Flour falls into that category. The pizza dough I made with it was just ok, and King Arthur's No-Knead Everything Bread, which seems adapted to this flour in particular, also was just ok.
I initially thought the issue may be my continued use of a large Dutch oven to bake high-hydration no-knead doughs instead of a smaller bread pot which would allow the bread to rise more than spread. This problem plagued me with Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread recipe. The fridge-rise, less-hydration Jeff Hertzberg approach and its variants generally produce must better loafs. However, I tried this flour with the King Arthur-version of Hertzberg's approach and also ended up with a slightly (but not that much) lower rise bread.
So the issue seems to be the flour or more likely, my unfamiliarity with it. In any case, this recipe, which I halved and used just sesame seeds instead of an everything spice blend, will probably not be a repeat.
While the bread dough was easy to prepare, as all no-kneads are, I really don't like handling gooey, non-fridge rise doughs like this.
These doughs are just far messier to shape and transfer to a baking pot.
The upside of this bread is that it tasted wonderful – yeasty, slightly crusty on the outside, and soft in the middle. It was gone within the day!
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