In November 2006, New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman wrote an article for his Sunday feature—it was just an interview with a baker who came up with a new method to bake bread, no big deal. Except that this baker claimed he had not only developed a manner of making absolutely amazing bread at home without the headaches of kneading and working the dough, but that his process was so easy, a four-year-old could do it.
Wait.
Why would a commercial baker develop a way to make his product at home? This seemed a little self-defeating. But this baker—his name was Jim Lahey—stated that his goal was for anyone to be able to create bakery-quality bread—you know, that bread with the hard crust and the rich center, not the squishy store-bought stuff—as often as they wanted.
So, Mark Bittman met with Lahey and the two baked this new bread together. Bittman wrote the piece and that article launched an entire bread-making movement. There were videos, additional articles, online pieces, cookbooks—all about this new method of baking bread easily.
Now, baking bread had always been a daunting and intimidating task, one only taken on by the serious home baker. It was time-consuming, required a lot of attention, and was easy to mess up—which is why homemade bread has always been so revered.
The traditional process of baking bread requires dissolving yeast and sugar in water, then adding in lard, salt, and flour. Then the kneading starts. After that, the bread has to rise for an hour. Then you punch the dough and allow it to deflate and sit for another hour. Then you bake.
Then, in the 1990s, bread machines came along. These things were great. Now there was a machine where you could load in all the ingredients and allow the device to do all the kneading, punching, waiting, and cooking. You just loaded it up, pressed a few buttons, and walked away. But the bread was still the soft, squishy store-bought kind—a much fresher, preservative-free version of it, but still not that artisan, bakery-style bread we all love.
Then came Jim Lahey’s method, where we can not only make the most amazing artisan bread ever, but it is so incredibly easy that—yes, a four-year-old can do it.
It’s cheap—an average loaf will cost you about thirty cents to make—incredibly crispy, tasty, and easy to do.
What Jim Lahey came up with was a way to allow time to do all the work—up to twenty-four hours. It takes a minute to mix the bread, uses only a quarter teaspoon of yeast (most recipes call for a full teaspoon or more), and allows the yeast to ferment very slowly. The dough is so sticky that you couldn’t knead it even if you wanted to, which is good because you just leave it alone and let it do its thing.
His method creates a great cracking crust and flavor and is the kind of bread that you get from professionals’ steam-injected ovens. And it does this by allowing the pot you cook it in to act as a steam oven and get the same results. Over the past year, I’ve made dozens of loaves of this bread and with a few tweaks, it’s pretty bullet proof.
So how do you make no-knead bread? It’s pretty easy.
First, you will need:
1¾ cup of warm water
3 cups of flour
1 teaspoon of salt
¼ teaspoon of yeast
In a large bowl combine flour, yeast, and salt. Mix the dry ingredients, then add your water. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit. Jim Lahey’s recipe calls for between eighteen and twenty-four hours, but I would say eight hours is a minimum. I make a batch up at night and we have it for breakfast the next day. I also use a Sharpie and write on the plastic wrap the time that I started it, so I don’t forget. If you like a larger loaf and less dense bread, wait longer, toward the twenty-four-hour time frame.
Place flour over a cutting board and place the dough on it. Fold it into a ball—don’t knead it or work it; just fold it—place back in the bowl and cover back with plastic wrap for thirty minutes.
HINT: What I do here is, while the dough is on the cutting board, I wash out the bowl, dry it, and place a layer of olive oil on the bottom. Then when the dough goes back in the bowl, I’ll add a little olive oil on the top. This will add flavor and allow the bread to easily slip into the pan when you cook it.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and place a Dutch oven, casserole dish, or anything that has a heavy cover and seals, into the oven to preheat—empty—for ten minutes. You want the pan to be hot when you start.
Place the bread inside the Dutch oven. I used to cut vent holes on the top of the loaf, but found that they don’t do much and the look of the bread is nicer without them. Cook for thirty minutes.
Remove the lid and cook for an additional five minutes or so to get the top get crusty.
It’s tempting to cut it right out of the oven, but you get a better result if you let it cool for ten minutes or so.
Now, I might add that with this recipe is everything depends on the Dutch oven or pot that you use to cook it in. With mine, I can’t get the crust extremely crusty, without burning the bottom of the bread, so I settle for a medium crust. I’ve seen others do it where they can cook and extra five minutes or so and get it crusty all over. You can try adding parchment paper to the bottom of the pot; that will give you some additional cooking time.
And that’s it. No-knead bread. Fast, easy, fun, and costs probably around thirty cents a loaf. Obviously, there are no preservatives in it like there are with store-bought bread, so it won’t stay fresh for more than a week or so, but you won’t have to worry about it. This bread goes fast. We’ve never had a loaf make it to three days.
Two days is our record—two days, five hours, and sixteen minutes.
