No Knead Bread

This is perhaps one of the easiest yeast breads I have ever made although not the fastest. Mix the dough up the day before you want to serve, cover it and forget about it until the next day. The next day remove the dough from a bowl and shape the bread on a flour covered cloth. Let raise for about 2 hours. Preheat your oven a half hour before baking with the pan you are going to bake the bread in. I used a Le Creuset dutch oven. The only change I made in this recipe was to turn the oven down to 400 when I put the bread in the oven. It was still done in 45 minutes. The smell while it baked was heavenly and I almost cut it before I took the picture. If you like a crisp crust with a tender inside and big holes that is what you will get with this bread recipe. It is so good…..

 

No Knead Bread

Yield: One 1 1/2-pound loaf

Total Time: About 1 1/2 hours plus 14 to 20 hours rising

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.
1 5/8 cups water

Directions:

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Recipe from Mark Bittman

Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles.