No-knead Bread

A lovely boule!

Like seemingly everyone else, we ventured into bread making over the past year. Despite its chart-topping popularity, it took us a long time to come across the No-Knead Bread recipe by Jim Lahey and Mark Bittman. But, eventually, thanks to some good friends, we discovered the wonders of the overnight rising, no-knead loaf. The recipe can also be found freely available on Epicurious. The rest of this post contains our adaptation and method, which is a cross between the NYT and Epicurious recipes. Whether you make this bread using our recipe, the NYT one, or the Epicurious one, we highly suggest watching this YouTube video from the NYT. Not only is it a great throwback to the days before high-definition video, it is a great visual aid for the process.

The premise of this recipe is simple: four ingredients and a minimal amount of effort leads to an excellent loaf of bread. All you need is flour (ideally bread, but AP works great, too), a little bit of salt, a tiny amount of yeast, water, and time. Our current favorite flour to use is King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour, and we typically use fine ground sea salt instead of kosher or table salt. The yeast comes from a packet of instant yeast (you know the ones - they come in a three pack) from the grocery store baking aisle. Each standard 1/4 oz packet, which is approximately 2 1/4 tsp, is good for 8 or 9 loafs bread.

Tools

• your hands
• a large bowl or container for mixing and rising
• plastic wrap or similar to cover bowl
• 4 1/2- to 5 1/2-quart heavy pot with lid (we use an enameled cast-iron dutch oven)
• cotton or linen tea towel (not terry cloth)

Ingredients

• 430g bread flour (or AP flour), plus more for dusting
• 1/4 tsp instant yeast
• 1 tsp fine sea salt
• 1 1/2 cups water

Instructions

• Combine bread flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Mix with your hand to combine.
• Add 1 1/2 cups water and mix together dough with your hand or a wooden spoon. Dough will be wet and sticky.
• Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rise on the counter for at least 12 hours, but ideally 18 to 24 hours. We like to mix the dough around dinner time and let rise overnight. Dough is ready when the surface is dotted with bubbles.
• Lightly flour a work surface then lightly flour your hands and turn out the dough onto the surface. The dough will be sticky and loose, clinging to the bowl in long strands. Don't add more flour, even though you will be tempted!
• Using lightly floured hands, form a dough ball by grabbing the edge of the dough, lightly stretching it out a little, then folding it into the center. Repeat this action around all sides of the ball. You can give the dough a few pinches in the center where all the edges have been gathered in if desired.
• Place your cotton or linen tea towel on the work surface and generously dust with flour. With your lightly floured hands, gently lift the dough ball onto the towel, placing it seem side down. Dust the top of the dough ball with flour and fold the towel over the dough. Let rise for 2 hours.
• After 1 1/2 hours, preheat your oven, with your heavy pot inside it on a rack in the lower third of the oven, to 450F.
• After the 2 hour rise, carefully remove the pot from the oven (using oven mitts - it is hot!) and remove the lid. Rip off a piece of parchment paper large enough for the dough ball and so that some will come up the sides when it is in the pot. Unfold the towel covering the bread, lightly dust the top if needed, then carefully flip the dough onto the parchment paper so the seem side is up. Carefully lower the dough (now on the parchment paper) into the heavy pot and cover the pot with its lid.
• Bake, covered, for 30 minutes then uncover and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes. The bread should be a pleasant pale golden after the initial 30 minutes, and it will be finished when it is a deep chestnut color, but not burnt.
• Remove pot from oven and place bread onto a wire rack to cool. Let cool for at least 1 hour.
• Enjoy! We particularly enjoy dipping these loaves into infused olive oil mixtures or olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Sliced 1/4" thick it makes outstanding sandwiches.

Notes

• This recipe is incredibly forgiving. No bread flour? Not a problem. Only 12 hour rise? No problem!
• Placing the dough ball onto parchment paper before placing into the pot for baking makes easy work of both inserting the dough and removing the baked loaf.
• After uncovering during the bake, the loaf will take anywhere from 15 to 30 more minutes. Our oven usually takes only 15 more minutes to produce a crusty, but not overly hard crust, that creates an excellent dipping or sandwich bread. The crust is there but it won't impale the top of your mouth if you bite it the wrong way.
• You must let the loaf cool for at least an hour! This might be the most painful experience of your day, but it is totally worth it to create that perfect bread texture.

Dough after mixing - wet and shaggy

Dough after rising overnight (~18 hours)

Dough ball before baking

The finished product - sliced and ready to eat!