Easy No-Knead Bread Recipe
Filed Under: Do It Yourself on July 2, 2011
I grew up in a house where my mother made homemade bread that was thick, delicious, and 100x better than anything you can get in the store (even the $4 loaves). I have a bread machine and make my own bread as well, but it never seems as great as hers. Plus, with a machine, you’re limited to one loaf at a time and must wait for the machine to cool before making another – otherwise it rises too fast, collapses, and you end up with a chunk of rock-like bread.
The trouble is, making bread by hand, in quantity, is hard work. Kneading and working that dough takes a lot of effort and, well, I’m lazy. So forget that. Instead, I make no-knead bread when I make more than one loaf at a time (the bread machine kneads for you). The recipe is so easy, you’ll be crazy to keep buying $4 loaves of bread and preservatives at the grocery store. For about $1 in flour and 10 minutes of your own time, you can make it your damn self.
Here’s the ingredients:
3 cups bread flour – any type, so long as it’s finely ground.- Roughly 1/2 cup of additional flour for working.
- 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast or 3/4 teaspoon of standard yeast.
- 1-1/4 teaspoons salt (or your best guess) – any finely ground salt will do.
- 1-1/2 or so cups cool water.
- Extras can be added like cornmeal as a crust (just use it on the folding board, below), butter (baste it halfway through baking – see below), and fun flavoring inserts like dried onion or fruit.
For this demonstration, I made a single batch without any extras. Each batch makes about 1-1/2 pound loaves. I usually make a double loaf (3 pounds) in the crock I’m using here and a single loaf (split in two) in another crock I have with a separator down the center. Your cooking container needs to be something stone or heavy iron. I use ceramic crocks, as shown, but you can also use dutch ovens (well-oiled), or any type of stoneware. So long as it has a lid, as you’ll see.
First, sift the flower into a large mixing bowl, add yeast and salt, then add the water. Start with 1-1/2 cups if you’re using white flour and add extra splashes as needed. Stir with a heavy spoon or a bread mixer (a spoon is actually easier). After a few stirs, the dough will have formed and will be ugly shaggy, but all you’re goal is at this point is to get all of the stuff mixed together. It’s EXTREMELY sticky at this point, which is why it’s more work to use a mixer than it is to just do it by hand with a spoon – cleaning a single spoon is a lot less work than is the whole mixer. Mixing a single batch takes only a couple of minutes and little muscle power.
Once it’s mixed, cover it as air tight as you can with plastic wrap, a lid, or whatever. Put it in a room-temperature cupboard or on a shelf away from sunlight and let it sit for 12-16 hours. The warmer the room, the less standing time, but any warmer than 90 degrees and you might end up with dough that rises too soon. Adjust the rising time according to the temperature. The dough will rise in the bowl, so your mixing or rising bowl should be at least double the dough’s size. What’s happening is the yeast is beginning to work and is letting off a lot of nitrogen and whatnot. So if you look at the mix (without opening it!) through this time, you’ll see a lot of broken holes where gas pockets burst through the top. It will have settled down to close to its original size (maybe 20% larger) and have only small craters when it’s ready.
When it gets to that point, flour a work surface liberally. Open the dough’s container (remove plastic, lid, whatever) and then coat your hands in flour. Remove dough to the work surface, scraping it out of the container. Work the dough by folding it two or three times, keeping the flour moving on the work surface so the dough doesn’t stick. If you have extras (cranberries, nuts, whatever) to add, this is the time to do it.
Take a cotton towel (hand towels are about the right size for this size batch) and lay it flat near the dough ball – I usually put it on a large plate or small baking sheet, to make it easier to move later. Coat half of the towel liberally with flour (or cornmeal, what bran, etc. as this will become your crust). Fold the towel over the top of the dough ball and set in its room-temp space for another two hours.
The cotton allows the dough to breathe. Now it will rise and roughly double its size in that two hours. Twenty or so minutes before the time is up, heat the oven to 400 degrees and put your crock inside, with its lid.
When the dough is ready, remove the crock and open it. Coat the bottom and sides (as you can) with flour (or cornmeal, wheat bran, etc.) and drop the dough ball in by rolling it off of the flour. It won’t look pretty inside the crock, but it doesn’t matte.r It will even itself out. If you’re a perfectionist, you can shake the crock to even out the dough ball and slice pictures or whatever in the top if you want. As you can see from my photo, I’m not a perfectionist.
Bake with the lid on for 25-30 minutes. The dough will form a roughly bread-loaf shape (according to your crock’s shape), rounding at the top. Take the lid off and bake for an additional 20-25 minutes or until it begins to take a golden brown crust. I like to take the lid off and baste the loaf with butter to let it brown for that last few minutes.
Remove from oven and crock and place on a rack to dry. I have an old grill I lay across the burners on our gas stove and use as a drying rack. You can use just about anything that allows a lot of air flow from all directions, though.
After it’s cooled for fifteen minutes or so, slice into it and use a lot of butter and honey. It’s allowed on the brand new, hot, oven-fresh bread if you’re the one who made it. Best thing in the world right there.
As you can see, this loaf is pretty flat because the crock I used is relatively large. I usually make a double loaf in this crock, which makes it roughly twice as tall. Adjust the recipe to size according to your container. I’ve as much as tripled it without requiring much adjustment to the baking times.
Enjoy!
