I’ve been making the No Knead Bread, invented by Jim Lahey and made famous by Mark Bittman, and this time I used 1 cup of all purpose flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1 cup bread flour. All King Arthur brand flours. Worked well. Not a lot of rise, but it was cold in the house this weekend.

Sullivan Bakery Bread, The No Knead Bread Recipe, the Gardenfork version

I’ve made this bread about 20 times now, and it comes out great every time. I’ve learned a few things doing this. It really helps that the dough be in a warm place during the long rise time. I let it sit overnight, so I bring it up to the bedroom, as the rest of the house cools down at night ( thanks to our programmed thermostats ).

A viewer emailed me to say that you can also put the dough in the oven and leave the oven light bulb turned on, this will keep it warm enough as well. You don’t have to turn on the oven itself, just the oven light.

3 cups all purpose flour. I use King Arthur brand flour.

1/4 teaspoon instant yeast

1 tablespoon salt

Cornmeal, preferably coarse ground.

Mix together flour, yeast, and salt in a large bowl. Add 1 1/2 cups of warm water ( about 100 degrees ).

Mix with a spatula. The dough will look like it needs more water. It doesn’t. Mark Bittman has the best word to describe it, the dough will look “shaggy”

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in a warm spot for about 12 hours. You can let it rise longer if you want. The dough will have a good amount of bubbles in it.

Get out two large cutting boards.

Flour a large cutting board and turn the dough out onto the board with the spatula.

Put a clean towel on the other board and dust the towel with cornmeal.

Take the dough, dust it with a bit of flour and fold it over on itself front to back and side to side.

Then turn the ball of dough so the folds are on the bottom and place in the center of the towel dusted with cornmeal.

Fold the towel ends over the dough and let rise for about 2 hours. The dough should roughly double in size. The dough will not rise up a lot, but will grow outward on the board.

30 minutes before its time to bake the bread, put your dutch oven in the oven with the cover on, preheat the oven to 450 F.

When the dough has risen and the oven is preheated, remove the dutch oven, put it on a wire rack next to the dough on the towel which is on the cutting board.

Slide your hand under the towel and dough, lift up the dough and flip it over into the dutch oven. What you want is the folds of the dough, -what was on the bottom of the dough during the rise – to be on top when it sits in the dutch oven.

Be careful doing this as the dutch oven is very hot.

The dough never lands perfectly in the middle of the dutch oven. I use a wooden spatula to gently nudge it toward the center, pushing down any part of the dough that may be sticking to the side of the dutch oven.

Cover the dutch oven and place in oven for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, remove cover, the dough should look like bread and be starting to brown. Remove the cover and bake for another 15 minutes.

The bread should now look like great bread. The crust should be golden brown. You can bake it longer if need be.

When done, remove bread from dutch oven and cool on a wire rack.

You can double this recipe, but be careful with the water, add not quite twice the amount of water, you can always add more.

NEW INFO

my house is quite cool in the winter, and i remember someone suggesting putting the dough in the oven with the oven turned off, but the oven light turned on. so first I had to finally fix the oven light in our 50’s era propane stove salvaged from a Vagabond camper trailer. I fixed the light, and left the dough in the oven overnight with the light on.

Being the gadget geek, I put in my temperature probe to see at what temperature the dough would maintain. It stays at about 78 F. Great.