No Knead Bread

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
• 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed

Instructions

NOTE: Watch the video in the source link before making this bread!

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.
2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.
3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 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.
4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel 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. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

History

Christmas Dinner @ Bro’s House - Dec 25, 2018

This time, I had the whole 18 hours to let the dough rise.

Here’s what the dough looked like 15 hours into the 18 hour rise:

And here’s how the dough looked at the end of the rise in step 3:

I got a tip for slicing the bread this time: don’t push down on the bread with the bread knife, just let the serated blade do it work! It sliced much better than the first attempt. With the longer rise, I thought this one tasted better and had a less dense structure:

The bread was a perfect side to short rib, crab, tomato bisque, and potatoes au gratin. The next morning, we had enough to stack eggs benedict on top of the bread leftovers.

Holiday dinner party - Dec 14, 2018

For the first attempt, scheduling works out such that I only had 12 hours to let the dough rise. Still totally delicious!

Here’s the dough rising at the end of step 2, when it is resting under plastic wrap:

Here’s the bread fresh out of the oven:

And how it sliced:

I paired the bread with creamy chicken marsala, honey balsamic brussel sprouts, and garlic mashed potatoes: