No-Knead Bread

No-Knead Bread

-3 cups all-purpose flour plus a little for dusting

-1/4 tsp instant yeast

-1 ¼ tsp salt

-1 & 2/3 cups water

-cornmeal

Directions:

-In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 & 2/3 cups warm 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 room temperature.

-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 (sometime I skip this “resting” step if I don’t have time and it turns out fineJ)

-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 or cornmeal (I actually sprinkle just a little bit of cornmeal onto parchment paper instead so I don’t have to dirty a towel). Cover with another towel and let rise for about 2 hours (I’ve skipped this step before, too, and it turned out fine, just a bit more dense). 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 in oven as it heats (I use a 4qt Corningware dish for single loaf and 2qt for half-loaf, but anything that can go in the oven that has a lid will work). When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel (parchment) and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is OK. 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 5 to 15 minutes until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on rack. (Note about cooking times: I made it just like it says to for a year and it was fine. Now for some reason the bottom gets burned if I do it this way. Now I bake it at 425 for 30 min covered then 5 min uncovered. Just watch it and see how your oven cooks it)

Note: Sometimes I have to add quite a bit more flour than just the 3 cups depending on how humid it is outside. It should be sticky, but not to the point you can’t form it into a ball. Also, you can divide the dough into two before that last couple hours of rising and make two smaller loaves. I usually do this and then freeze one loaf after I bake it. It stores great in the freezer and tastes awesome after it thaws.