Supper easy bread recipe that turns out with a great crust. It came from Jim Lahey, owner of Sullivan Street Bakery in New York City, who created a way to make a spectacular loaf at home, with a crackling crust, open-holed crumb, light texture, and fantastic flavor — all with next to no hands-on time.
A wet dough and slow fermentation are the keys to success; almost by magic, they take the place of kneading . You’ll also notice the unique baking method — a heated covered pot — which creates essentially an oven within an oven to trap steam as the bread bakes. I’m not kidding when I say the results will blow your mind.
The only thing required is forethought. Ideally, you will start the dough about 24 hours before you plan to eat it; you can cut that to 12 and even 9, but you’ll be sacrificing some of the yeasty flavor and open crumb.
P.S. There is a high altitude recipe also on the blog.
Ingredients:
- 4 c all-purpose or bread flour, plus more as needed
- Scant 1/2 tsp instant yeast
- 2 tsp salt
- 2 Tab olive oil (optional)
- Cornmeal, semolina, or wheat bran for dusting
Directions:
- Combine the flour, yeast, and salt in a large bowl.
- Add 2 cups water (it should be about 70°).
- Stir until blended. You’ll have a shaggy, sticky dough; add a little more water if it seems dry.
- Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rest for about 18 hours at room temperature (a couple of hours less if your kitchen is warmer; a couple more if it’s cool). The dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles.
- Lightly flour a work surface.
- Transfer the dough to it.
- Fold it once or twice; it will be soft but not terribly sticky once dusted with flour.
- Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest for about 15 minutes.
- Using just enough additional flour to keep the dough from sticking, gently and quickly shape the dough into a ball.
- Generously coat a cotton (not terry cloth) kitchen towel with cornmeal, semolina, or wheat bran (or use a silicone baking mat)’
- Put the dough seam side down on the towel and dust with more flour or cornmeal.
- Cover with another cotton towel (or plastic wrap) and let rise for about 2 hours. When it’s ready, the dough will be more than doubled in size and won’t spring back readily when poked with your finger.
- At least a half hour before the dough is ready, heat the oven to 450°.
- Put a 3- to 4-quart covered pot (with the cover)— it may be cast iron, enamel, Pyrex, or ceramic — in the oven as it heats.
- When the dough is ready, carefully remove the pot from the oven.
- Turn the dough over into the pot, seam side up. (Slide your hand under the towel and just turn the dough over into the pot; it’s messy, and it probably won’t fall in artfully, but it will straighten out as it bakes.)
- Cover with the lid and bake for 30 minutes.
- Then remove the lid and bake for another 20 to 30 minutes, until the loaf is beautifully browned; the bread’s internal temperature should be 200°F or more. (If at any point the dough starts to smell scorched, lower the heat a bit.)
- Remove the bread with a spatula or tongs and cool on a rack for at least 30 minutes before slicing.
Serves one 1 1/2 lb loaf
Source: How to Bake Everything via Eric Kleerup
Faster No-Knead Bread: Reduce the initial rise to 8 hours; skip the 15-minute resting period in Step 2 and then shape the dough in Step 3. Proceed immediately to Step 4.
Whole Wheat No-Knead Bread: Substitute whole wheat flour for up to 2 cups of the all-purpose flour.
Yeast produces different byproducts depending on the temperature it ferments at. So dough formed with a warm ferment ends up with a sour, yeasty off-flavor, as opposed to the richer, maltier aromas you get from bread fermented at cooler temperatures. Giving lean doughs like this a stay in the fridge for three to five days can massively increase its flavor and its performance. Same goes for the no-knead bread.
After allowing it to rise at room temperature overnight, Stick it directly into the refrigerator for three days. There’s another advantage built into this as well: cold dough is much easier to handle. Gluten gets stiffer as it cools, which means that refrigerated dough will be much simpler to shape into a ball or a long loaf, or whatever shape you wish to bake it in.
After shaping, cover is with a bowl or a flour-coated kitchen towel and let it rise at room temperature for a couple of hours to take the chill off it and leaven for the final time before slashing it with a sharp knife (this allows it to expand faster in the Dutch oven, and makes it look pretty), and baking.