Make-a-the-bread!

r soon after we started settling into the new house, which is why I’m wearing my old glasses, footy pajamas, and the kitchen looks halfway done. I’m happy to say that those faux bricks are bright white now, as are the cabinet doors, which are back up where they belong. I’m still wearing those Dr. Denton’s, though, because we’re going through a chilly spell here. More like October than August.

The beauty of this recipe lies in it’s simplicity; a short list of ingredients and a little bit of patience is all that is required. When it was first published back in November of 2006 it spread like wildfire; it was on the top of the New York Times most-blogged and most-emailed list for a long while, and this was well-deserved. Anyone can make this bread, and I do mean anyone, even if you’ve never baked bread before. No machine, no hassle, no guess-work and, perhaps most-importantly, no-kneading. And, oh, that crust. Man alive, what a crust.

So here it is: Jim Lahey’s Sullivan Street Bakery’s (as told to Mark Bittman, as printed in the New York Times as baked by yours truly) fantastical, magical, out-of-this-world no-knead bread.

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Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 350ml + 7tsp 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. For the love of all that is holy, use good pot holders. Preferably the kind that look like big mitts. 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.

5. Once cooled, hack yourself off a chunk and slather it with honey. Enjoy!

*I had to figure this out on my own because none of my measurement tools could supply me with the 1 5/8 cups of water the recipe called for. So I did some math, and 350ml + 7 tsp works out fine. Jim Lahey’s original recipe calls for 12 oz, if that’s easier for you.

** I’ve made this in three different pots: one ceramic, which is seen in the video, one lightweight 5-qt. enameled cheapie I got at a dollar store in Queens, and one 6-qt. stainless All-Clad casserole. The ceramic pot made the better bread, by far. In Mark Bittman’s video Jim Lahey uses a Le Crueset, which is an awesome cooking line. in blogville there was some worry as to whether the pot handles could withstand the 450F heat. I wouldn’t risk a pot that expensive. The bread I made in the $7 enameled pot was still pretty damn good.

“Bread” by the Foundation
Courtesy of PodSafe music Network

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