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:

1. Combine the flour, yeast, and salt in a large bowl.
2. Add 2 cups water (it should be about 70°).
3. Stir until blended. You’ll have a shaggy, sticky dough; add a little more water if it seems dry.
4. 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.
5. Lightly flour a work surface.
6. Transfer the dough to it.
7. Fold it once or twice; it will be soft but not terribly sticky once dusted with flour.
8. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest for about 15 minutes.
9. Using just enough additional flour to keep the dough from sticking, gently and quickly shape the dough into a ball.
10. Generously coat a cotton (not terry cloth) kitchen towel with cornmeal, semolina, or wheat bran (or use a silicone baking mat)’
11. Put the dough seam side down on the towel and dust with more flour or cornmeal.
12. 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.
13. At least a half hour before the dough is ready, heat the oven to 450°.
14. 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.
15. When the dough is ready, carefully remove the pot from the oven.
16. 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.)
17. Cover with the lid and bake for 30 minutes.
18. 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.)
19. 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.

Altitude really does make a difference when baking. 

Also, for a more flavorful bread try refrigerating it for a couple of days.  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  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.

Ingredients:

• 3 c bread flour
• 1 1/4 tsp salt
• scant 1/4 tsp instant (rapid rise) yeast
• 1 4/3 c room temperature water

Directions:

1. Combine flour, yeast, and salt in a large mixing bowl.
2. Add 1 3/4 cups tepid (warm room temperature) water and stir until blended. Dough will be sticky and shaggy, but will come together in a rough ball.
3. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let rest at room temperature (68-70 degrees) for 12-15 hours. When dough is ready, it will have roughly doubled in size and surface will be dotted with bubbles.                                       Note: High gluten content in your bread flour is essential at high altitude. Do *not* substitute all-purpose or whole grain flours unless you add additional wheat gluten.                                                                                      Note: Don’t be tempted to skimp on the salt. It turns out it’s important.
4. Dump dough out of bowl onto lightly-floured work surface.
5. Fold it over itself a few times.
6. Sprinkle with flour, cover with saran wrap, and let rest 10-15 minutes
7. Using just enough flour (really, the least you can get away with) to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball.
8. Generously coat a silpat or non-terry cotton towel with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal.
9. Put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal.
10. Cover with an oiled piece of saran wrap covered with a second, damp cotton towel. (This is to make up for the fact that air pressure is less at altitude.)
11. Let rise for about 1 1/2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
12. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees.
13. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats.
14. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven.
15. Slide your hand under towel or silpat 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.
16. Cover with lid and bake 45 minutes, then check the temperature of the bread.
17. Remove lid and cook for up to another 15 minutes, until bread reaches an internal temperature of 210 degrees.                                                                                                                                                                                                   Note: Mine got stuck at just over 200 degrees, but I took it out after about 55 minutes anyway because, well, it just seemed done.
18. Remove bread from oven and cool on a rack until it reaches nearly room temperature before you cut into it. (This keeps it from drying out.)
19. Enjoy!

Serves:  one 1 1/2 lb loaf

Source:  Cooking at 5280 – Denver Calibrated Cooking  Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery, via Mark Bittman at The New York Times