Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I wanted to see if I could make no-knead bread in my dual basket Ninja air fryer. Various YouTube videos and websites said you can certainly bake bread in an air fryer, so it was time to see for myself. I used the same recipe I’ve used with much success before (see: https://rhondabracey.com/2020/07/15/trying-again-with-no-knead-bread/), adding cheese, jalapeños and chilli flakes to the mix. The dough was quite wet, which was a bit of a concern (was the flour or the yeast too old?). But I continued on anyway, doing all the steps I would normally do to make and prove the dough except for turning on the oven and heating a cast-iron dutch oven.

When the dough was near the end of the first proving stage, I took 2 small foil BBQ trays and made sure they fit the air fryer baskets (I had to turn up the edges and squeeze them a bit, but they fitted OK), then added some parchment paper to each, enough to cover the sides and beyond. When the dough was ready for the final forming into a ball, I added the small cubes of cheese and chopped jalapeños, rolled it a bit on a floured board, then split the mix into two, adding one to each of the foil BBQ trays in the baskets. Then let it sit for the final proving. Once that time was up, I cut away the excess parchment paper and then ‘tented’ the baskets with foil to keep the steam in when cooking (make sure you tuck the foil down the sides of the foil trays otherwise it will fly up into the heating element inside the air fryer).

I knew from what I’d seen and read that I might have to lower the temperature a little and almost certainly would need to lower the cooking time. I didn’t preheat the air fryer—just put the foil-covered baskets into the machine, set it to Air Fryer mode, 210C, for 20 minutes. When it finished, I removed the foil tents. Then I tipped the partially baked bread out of the parchment paper and put it back into the foil trays to cook for a further 10 mins (Air Fryer, 210C). It was lovely and brown and crusty, but the bottoms needed more, so I flipped the bread over and gave it an extra 5 mins at the same settings.

All up, I cooked the bread for about 30-35 minutes, which was about 10 mins less than in the conventional oven, and at a slightly lower temperature. The bonus was no need for preheating time (typically 45 mins waiting for a standard electric oven to heat up to 230C).

The verdict? Two small loaves of bread with far more crusty bits than usual! Very delicious!!! Good crumb, texture, and density, but they didn’t rise as much as I expected (as I said earlier, the mix was very wet and so I suspect the yeast or the flour may not have been at their prime, or it just needed more flour—or it could have been the air fryer style of cooking). In the photos below, I’ve included some tongs to you can get some idea of the size of the loaves. And yes that yellow oozy stuff is cheese!

Would I try it again? Yes!