Originally Posted by
Finkface
I have been reading up on scoring as I have been completely unable to do it. Is it even possible with Lahey method bread, which is the one I am doing? There is, of course, no kneading, so no gluten development. The dough is wet and sticky so impossible to score, at least for me. Is it a lost cause for no knead breads or am I doing something wrong?
Should be. I haven't made the Lahey recipe, but reading through it, it's not dissimilar to what I make. You still get gluten development at several points in the process. For example, you'll get some during the 12 hour rest in the Lahey recipe when you first hydrate the dough and let it do its initial rise (I use an autolyse period of 3-4 hours where the bulk of the flour and water simply sit at room temperature for this, prior to the actual rise). The folding will also help, as will shaping the loaves, although the practice I follow does utilize more folding (every 30 minutes during the first 2-3 hours of rise, I do several turns/folds of the dough in the bowl).
FWIW, most artisan bread recipes seem to be 75-85% hydration, so they're super-sticky doughs throughout most of the process. The turning/folding during the first couple of hours helps--you'll notice the dough beginning to be less tacky and more silky during this process--as does the shaping into balls and the loaf shaping.