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The absolutely stunning crust and crumb you see in the photo above is a direct result of Not Martha's highly successful attempt at making the No-Knead Bread that Mark Bittman talked about in the New York Times last week. The bread was, to quote NM, "awesome," with a crunchy crust and an open, chewy interior. In short, it was just how you want homemade bread to turn out and the recipe is simple enough for anyone to try, in no small part because there is a video how-to that accompanies the recipe.
And, since I mentioned that anyone can make it, I should point out that just about everyone already has. The bread recipe has spread like wild-fire through the blogs and probably has in the nonblogging world, as well, considering the fact that it was one of the most popular NYT articles last week. There is even a flickr group dedicated to the bread. I'm not sure if I could track down every blogger who made the recipe, but here are a few who have: Smitten Kitchen, Wednesday Chef, Bake my day , Eat, Lovely scones, Bread, water, salt, oil, Unemployed Chef, and Brownie Points.
Feel free to post a link to your post on the bread in the comments if I didn't catch it.
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11-16-2006 @8:46AM John said... The first time I tried the recipe, I used the 1 5/8 cup water from the article. The dough was way too wet and sticky. After watching the video again, I noticed the guy in it says 1 1/2 cup water. I tried that and the results were much much better.
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11-16-2006 @10:08AM mmm said... Sounds like pain à l'ancienne.
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11-16-2006 @11:18AM Ed said... Check out the long thread about this bread at LTHForum.com:
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=10612
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11-16-2006 @11:43AM Chris said... I wrote about Bittman's bread here:
http://electricstove.blogspot.com/2006/11/making-minimalist-mark-bittmans-no.html
I didn't use instant yeast, so mine came out too flat. After reading so many blog posts about it, now I know the substitution for next time.
Bittman founds his way back into food world spotlight for the second week in a row. This week, he suggested stuffing should be cooked outside the turkey.
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11-16-2006 @11:45AM Lord Jezo said... Can someone explain a bit more the whole thing about putting on some cornmeal or wheat on the towel and laying it over?
How does that part work? Do I put it on both towels or just the bottom one? What is that step for? Does it make the crust?
I know nothing about bread making so I have no idea what this part is for.
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11-16-2006 @11:52AM rainey said... Cummon, be fair! This is LAHEY bread or Sullivan Street Bakery bread. Let's give credit where credit is due and that's NOT to the reporter no matter how nifty the alliteration in Bittman bread is.
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11-16-2006 @11:55AM Punisher2k said... Can we get the recipe please? Link to a site that requires login is wrong.
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11-16-2006 @11:59AM rainey said... This is a veeerrrryyyy wet dough. When it sits on a cotton towel (100% twill-weave cotton towels are now 49¢ each at IKea's Christmas tent) for 2 hours the dough and the towel want to share the moisture and merge into one another. Rubbing generous amounts of flour into both towels will give you better release from the one it sits *on*. Some people are putting cornmeal on the bottom one as well. Keep in mind this will become the top of your loaf.
After the 2 hour rise, the bread is turned onto the top towel and dropped in the hot pot with the seam up. This gives the rising crust a weak spot in the skin through which to rise.
Some people are also dropping some cornmeal into the bottom of the hot pot before they drop in the dough for better release from the pan.
Personally, I didn't have any prob with release from the towel or the pot but, like many others, thought the bread needed more salt for flavor.
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11-16-2006 @12:07PM Peter said... I decided to try it too, with excellent results - read about it at:
http://eventhorizon.org/cs/blogs/peter/archive/2006/11/08/26.aspx
It is similar to pain à l'ancienne, but even less working with the dough, less yeast, and a room temperature rise. I think the real genius here is the cooking technique - something I want to try on other bread recipes.
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11-16-2006 @12:06PM Punisher2k said... Here it is. I read that 1 1/2 cups water is better,
Recipe: No-Knead Bread
Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.
1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups 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 warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.
2. 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.
3. 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, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. 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 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.
Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.
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11-16-2006 @1:58PM Marianne said... Yes, use 1.5 cups water and notice that Lahey uses his measuring cup to scoop out the flour (instead of properly spooning the flour into the cup). I am making my second batch of this and it's even better than the first. I also subbed in about 3 Tbsp of whole wheat flour. My blog will be updated with new pictures tonight.
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11-16-2006 @2:25PM McAuliflower said... I had no problems using 1 5/8 cups of water (390 mls...).
However, making a swiss cheese onion poppyseed loaf did result in the cheese causing the bread to stick to the pan. It was very tasty though!
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11-16-2006 @7:52PM Vanessa Balchen said... I tried it, check out this post: http://www.whatgeekseat.com/wordpress/?p=52
It didn't go well and by reading these comments I guess I should have used 1 1/2 cups of water instead of 1 5/8...but really 1/8 cup less water wouldn't have made that much of a difference.
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11-16-2006 @8:29PM JD said... Punisher2K thanks for the recipe but does anyone know if the bread has to be cook in an iron cast pot or Dutch oven pot? I don't have either one but can I use regular pots?
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11-16-2006 @9:38PM Sarah Miller said... I've jumped on the no-knead bread bandwagon, and I'm never going back. 1 1/2 cups water worked for me, and I was able to pry the loaf off of the floured towel with a spatula.
Read about it here:
http://foodandpaper.blogspot.com/2006/11/no-need-to-knead.html
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11-16-2006 @11:43PM Coin said... I live on a small island, and we don't have a huge variety of goods here, the only yeast I'm able to get hold of is the active dry kind.
The recipe calls for 1/4tsp of instant yeast, if I activate 1/4tsp of this active dry kind in warm water, can I just follow the recipe as usual? Or would I have to use more of this yeast?
Hope someone can help, the bread looks fantastic!
To JD--I think the aspect of the pot is more that it's heavy so it retains more heat, so any heavy oven-capable pot with a good lid should do just fine.
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11-17-2006 @12:46AM chanit said... Next time I'll use 1.5 of water too, and bake it 10 minutes more without the lid (1 hour at all) , but I love this Bread, here it is, I hope next time my loaf will be prettier ! :-)
http://momsrecipesandmore.blogspot.com/2006/11/no-knead-bread-no-knead-bread-takes.html
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11-17-2006 @1:27AM Floyd said... We've got about a dozen people who've tried it over here:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/1437
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11-17-2006 @2:38PM Virtual Frolic said... I also made the bread, and posted about it on my blog here:
http://virtualfrolic.blogspot.com/2006/11/no-work-makes-vf-happy-gal.html
I'm going to try out the bread including rosemary this time - hopefully it'll go well!
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11-17-2006 @4:03PM JD said... Thanks Coin for the advice, my advice to the dry yeast is that I used 2 tablespoon of water from the 1 1/2 cup of water. But I don't think it's necessary to activate the yeast if it's fresh but if it's not, do the other method of activating the yeast. Otherwise, use the dump method.
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