Recipe: No-Knead Bread (The comments in Red italics are mine)
Adapted from Jim Lahey,
Time: About 1. hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting Sometimes I sub in ½ cup whole wheat flour.
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1 ½ teaspoons salt I use one heaping, so it’s probably a little less than this.
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.
1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water I only use 1 ¼ cups of water. It is way, way too sticky with all that water! You can adjust for humidity a bit, but really, 1 ¼ works perfectly. What I do though is use 1 cup of room temp water and ¼ of boiling water or very hot water mixed together. This gives your yeast a bit more to run with. You could use warm tap water, but we don’t drink our tap water, so that’s why I don’t. and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Actually, with the lesser amount of water, the dough will form a nice ball that you might have to work together a little with your hands.
Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room
temperature, about 70 degrees. I set it on the hearth, near the wood stove and go the full 18 hours. If you make it around
2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. 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. You’ll be amazed by how much it’s changed. It’s now quite sticky and I just dump it out of the bowl onto a floured cutting board and let it slide out on its own. It looks like a mess, but actually it’s quite easy to fold it over a few times. You don’t have to knead it at all. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.
3. 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. I had trouble with it sticking to the towel no matter how much cornmeal I used or what kind of towel, so now I just leave it on the cutting board that I dumped it onto and put a towel loosely over it. I then set this back on the hearth, but if the dishwasher’s running, above it is a good place for it too. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
4. 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 Make sure if your lid has a handle that it’s ovenproof up to 450 – the plastic ones on le creuset pans are, but I don’t know about any others) 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. Here on Gabriola, it seems like it really only needs another 5-10 minutes to brown after you take off the lid. I guess it’s the elevation. Cool on a rack.
This recipe is all the rage right now since it ran in the NY Times newspaper a while back. It’s so easy you can’t believe it. I’ve never been lucky making bread before and I’ve tried a lot, but this really is foolproof. The first time we made it, we put in all the water and it was a HUGE mess and it still turned out edible..
Yield: One 1.-pound loaf.
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