Fabulous Bread

Isn't this a beautiful loaf of bread? It's hot out of the Dutch oven and the product of a cookbook called "My Bread" by Jim Lahey. I first heard of the new no-knead bread making method via Cooks Illustrated magazine and tried various techniques without much success. I finally tracked down the source of the original method and found Jim Lahey's book. The author claims that the method requires "about 5 minutes of actual labor, followed by 12 to 18 hours in which the bread rises" -- and best of all, absolutely no tedious, strength sapping, kneading is required. Well, hallelujah, it's all true!

To get a feel for the technique I started at the beginning with "The Basic No-Knead Bread Recipe". I'm not very good at staying true to recipes, convinced, not always successfully, that a tweak here or there will improve the results, but in this case I followed the recipe and instructions to the letter. Okay, that's not entirely true, I used my Kitchen Aide stand mixer to mix the dough while the author says to mix with a wooden spoon or your hand. It took about three minutes to mix in the stand mixture (whereas he says mixing by hand takes about 30 seconds -- 30 seconds? I'm not sure about that, anyway ...). I started the first rise last night at about 10:30 p.m., left the mixture on the counter overnight and today while I strolled around Sidney with my sister, scooped it out for the second rise at about 4:30 and at 6:30 had a fabulous loaf of rustic bread. This is not your child's white bread and baloney sandwich bread -- this is a beautiful, chewy crusted, flavorful bread meant to be sliced thick and slathered with butter or used to scoop up the last precious drops of a homemade soup.

It truly does only take a few minutes of effort, but because of the long rising period, this isn't something that you whip up at the last minute. The only special equipment you need is a reasonable quality cast iron Dutch oven (crucial for the baking technique utilized), and other than that a wooden spoon, a large bowl and away you go (unless you are truly lazy and use your stand mixer).