No-Knead Bread

After Yining and Emily's successes with this bread, I decided to give it a try. Everyone who knows me knows that baking is my Waterloo but this bread is so ridiculously easy that even I turned out a great loaf my first go.

The original recipe is Jim Lahey's (Sullivan Street Bakery), made famous by Mark Bittman.

These are the four ingredients:
3 cups flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
1⅝ cups water

Simple instructions:

Mix ingredients together. Cover with saran wrap and let rise 14-20 hours. Fold down and let rise another 2 hours. Bake.

Copious instructions, with my personal tips and tweaks:

For the flour, I use 2¾ cups white bread flour and ¼ cup of whole wheat bread flour. (I tried going up to ½ cup of whole wheat, but I didn't like the texture as much.)

Make sure that the yeast is labelled fast rise, instant, or made for bread machines. I bought a strip of 3 little packets, Bakipan brand, and it works great. Note that this recipe calls for very little yeast; you can make about 8 loaves from one little packet. Yeast does get stale, so don't go crazy buying huge amounts.

Mix the salt, yeast and two flours together. Dump in the water. Stir until it's incorporated. The dough should look sort of messy and shaggy. Cover with saran wrap and stash it somewhere warmish. I keep my dough next to a heating vent. Some bloggers have suggested leaving it inside the oven with the light on (the bulb generating the tiny bit of heat required). Leave it there for 14 to 20 hours.

The next day, the dough should have grown about three times in size and now look smoother and doughier.

Give the dough a few turns to deflate it a bit, dusting the outside generously (I use wheat flour for the dusting). Note that this is not a knead, not even a punch-down - it's much gentler. Settle it back into the bowl.

Wet a paper towel and squeeze out most of the water. Drape the paper towel over the bowl (NOT touching the dough) and cover it with saran to keep the moisture in. Let it rise another 90 mins.

After 90 mins, leave the dough alone to rise another 30 mins, but set the oven to 450°. Put a Le Creuset pot with lid into the cold oven and let it gradually warm up as the oven is preheating. I've been using my 5½ quart round, and the dough doesn't quite reach all the edges. If you want a higher loaf, use a smaller pot. The original recipe says that you can use any heavy pot, cast iron, ceramic or Pyrex but I haven't tried those. Some bloggers report using the ceramic insert to a crock pot with success. Like the Le Creuset, any vessel needs to be able to withstand high heat, as well as retain it.

After the oven's preheated for 30 mins, carefully take out the now red-hot Le Creuset, set it on the stovetop, remove the lid and sprinkle a little flour in the bottom to prevent sticking. (For an extra bakery touch, use a sprinkle of cornmeal instead.) Then plop in your dough. It should sizzle when it hits the pot. Don't worry about how it looks now, it will come out of the oven looking very charmingly rustic and artisanal. Cover the pot and put it back in the oven.

The original recipe calls for baking it 30 mins covered and another 15-30 mins uncovered to brown it, but I find that it's already pretty well browned when I take the cover off and it takes only another 10 minutes, if that. Any longer and mine starts to burn. Keep a close eye on it once you uncover it, basically.

When done, it should turn out of the pot easily. Cool on a rack.

This bread has a deep, crisp crust and a great airy but chewy interior. Very hearty, very tasty. A definite crowd-pleaser. Most people I had over for my Soup Open House couldn't resist seconds and thirds, and many asked for the recipe.

It's really easy to make, but it *does* take advance planning. You have to start 1 day + 3 hours before you need the bread.

I usually mix the dough after I get home from work. If the next day is a weekday, I do the turn and second rise after work again. It's in the oven by around 8:00pm and baked by 9:00, so it would work for a late dinner. Otherwise, plan two days ahead. (If you need a quicker turnaround squeezed around a workday, you could theoretically get up at zero dark thirty for the turn, and bake it as you're getting ready for work. I am a zombie in the mornings and would almost certainly burn myself but morning people may find this workable. You are giving it a much shorter first rise, though, and it may affect the texture.)

If you mix the dough on a Friday night, do the turn and second rise around 9:00am for a lunch, or 3:00pm for a 6:00 dinner. Saturday-Sunday gives you the most flexible schedule.

The bread is most delicious freshly baked (natch). The crust will soften a bit if you keep it wrapped in plastic, but that's easily recovered in a toaster oven if you're just doing one slice, or a low temp (~250°) oven if you're doing larger chunks. This bread freezes well - just take it out to defrost for a few hours and warm it up in a low temp oven before serving.


Variations: Yining has tried adding herbs like rosemary with success. A gajillion people have baked this bread - the interwebs are full of variations, including with more exotic flours like rye or spelt. Explore at your leisure. Mark Bittman himself came up with a faster version, recipe here and commentary here, though unendorsed by Jim Lahey.