Recipe: No-Knead Bread
Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1 1/2 hours plus 14 to 20 hours rising
Ingredients
- 468 grams = 1 lb = ~3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
- 382 grams = 13 fl oz = ~1 9/16 cups water
- ¼ teaspoon instant yeast
- 10 g = ~1 2/3 teaspoons salt
- Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.
Instructions
- In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Rose Beranbaum, baking expert and all-around kitchen goddess, says this:
I got the most marvelously thin and crisp crust by baking at
450°F/230°C for 20 minutes lid on, 10 minutes lid off, transferred
to a baking sheet and 10 minutes more. Then 5 minutes oven propped ajar a few
inches, then 5 minutes oven off and door open.
Yield: One 1 1/2-pound loaf.
References