No Knead Bread
Ok, I have to join the rest of the baker-blogger world and share my experience w/ No Knead Bread. The rage was started when Mark Bittman wrote an article for the NYT about Jim Lahey’s method.
The recipe Bittman put into print varies somewhat from the recipe in the associated video (same link), but the basic ideas are the same. Mix flour, yeast, salt and water in roughly defined proportions. Get really sticky dough, kind of like biscuit dough. Cover and let it rise for 12-18 hours at room temp. The yeast does its magic, helping to align and develop the gluten in the flour. Eventually you get a big poofy, sticky, bubbly blob. If you tilt the bowl, it pulls away from the sides very slowly w/ lots of long strands. Turn the dough out of the bowl onto a VERY floured surface. Pat it down, fold it on itself like a letter, sprinkle it with wheat bran or flour, and turn it over onto a dish towel (not terrycloth – it’ll stick more). Sprinkle the other side w/ bran, wrap the towel over to cover it loosely, and let it rise another couple of hours. Put a heavy ovensafe pot with lid (like a dutch oven) in the oven and preheat it to 450 or so for at least half an hour. You want a really hot pot, got it? Toss the dough seam-side up (seam from the folds you made earlier) into the pot, cover it, and let it bake for 30 minutes. Take the cover off, let it bake for as long as it takes for the crust to brown properly and the inside to reach 210F (use an instant read thermometer). Probably 10 or 15 more minutes.
Let it cool on a wire rack, and resist the temptation to cut it open before it cools completely.
Voila!
