August 20, 2007 | Filed under: good eatin'
I was about to start making a loaf of fresh bread for a dinner party and I thought “This is such a terrific recipe, I should vlog it!”; then I realized “waitaminute…I already have!”.
I taped this last winter soon after we started settling into the new house, which is why I’m wearing my old glasses, footy pajamas, and the kitchen looks halfway done. I’m happy to say that those faux bricks are bright white now, as are the cabinet doors, which are back up where they belong. I’m still wearing those Dr. Denton’s, though, because we’re going through a chilly spell here. More like October than August.
The beauty of this recipe lies in it’s simplicity; a short list of ingredients and a little bit of patience is all that is required. When it was first published back in November of 2006 it spread like wildfire; it was on the top of the New York Times most-blogged and most-emailed list for a long while — it even has it’s own Flickr group — and this was well-deserved. Anyone can make this bread, and I do mean anyone, even if you’ve never baked bread before. No machine, no hassle, no guess-work and, perhaps most-importantly, no-kneading. And, oh, that crust. Man alive, what a crust.
So here it is: Jim Lahey’s Sullivan Street Bakery’s (as told to Mark Bittman, as printed in the New York Times as baked by yours truly) fantastical, magical, out-of-this-world no-knead bread.
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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 350ml + 7tsp 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. For the love of all that is holy, use good pot holders. Preferably the kind that look like big mitts. 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.
5. Once cooled, hack yourself off a chunk and slather it with honey. Enjoy!
*I had to figure this out on my own because none of my measurement tools could supply me with the 1 5/8 cups of water the recipe called for. So I did some math, and 350ml + 7 tsp works out fine. Jim Lahey’s original recipe calls for 12 oz, but I believe that recipe was for a commercial oven, as seen in his video. Hence Bittman’s home-baking adaptaion.
** I’ve made this in three different pots: one ceramic, which is seen in the video, one lightweight 5-qt. enameled cheapie I got at a dollar store in Queens, and one 6-qt. stainless All-Clad casserole. The ceramic pot made the better bread, by far. In Mark Bittman’s video Jim Lahey uses a Le Crueset, which is an awesome cooking line. in blogville there was some worry as to whether the pot handles could withstand the 450F heat. I wouldn’t risk a pot that expensive. The bread I made in the $7 enameled pot was still pretty damn good.
*** A little aside about flour. I’ve made this with Gold Medal All-Purpose flour, Gold Medal Unbleached, King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour and King Arthur Whole Wheat. The loaves in the video were both 1/2 wheat, 1/2 white. They were totally tasty, but not the Ultimate Fantasy Bread-Of-Your-Dreams that resulted from the K.A.U. Bread Flour. The one I have rising right now in the laundry room is K.A.U.B.F. with chopped prosciutto and cracked black pepper. I plan to dust the top with cornmeal and shredded fresh parmesean. I’ll let you know how that goes.
“Bread” by the Foundation
Courtesy of PodSafe music Network
August 21, 2007
@ 2:20 am
-just got a new apartment -first time with a kitchen to myself and I can’t cook a thing -I am so doing this on my first night!
August 21, 2007
@ 8:53 am
I guarantee you will be shocked and amazed at the results! There’s not a lot of room for error, and even when there’s a little error, it’s STILL really good! It’s a soft but hearty loaf, excellent thickly sliced with honey and even better for eggy-in-a-hole, the best breakfast on the planet! Let me know how it goes, ok?
August 21, 2007
@ 9:39 am
Awesome! Great music and I am so ready to make that recipe, especially with this cool weather.
Grace
August 21, 2007
@ 10:31 am
The crunchy part makes me want to make it today. I have not had enough crunchy bread in my lifetime, in fact I am very behind. Planning to get started on some after my shower.
August 21, 2007
@ 5:16 pm
The bread looks wonderful! As always, great video too!
August 23, 2007
@ 4:07 am
OMG, this is GREAT! On very level. Well put together. On every level. Now, I think I could bake bread. Thank you for this inspiration. Inspiration being the BEST thing imaginable. Fine to see you @ Vloggercue MissInspiration.
September 23, 2007
@ 7:01 pm
I have been making this bread for months, and it is amazingly versatile. You can add wheat berries,sunflower seeds, whole wheat flour and barley and about twice the yeast and beat it down at 14 hrs and give it 3 more hours to rise it makes great whole grain bread. It also makes great pizza dough. Just take the regular recipe dough, let it rise overnight, coat it in olive oil and gently squish it into an 11×17 square pan. Then let it rise for 30 min and bake it at 450° for 5 minutes to let the crust cook a little. Finally, take it out add your toppings and put it back in for about 25min (depending on how many toppings).
BTW for the bread I make double recipes using a covered $9 turkey roasting pan.
October 10, 2007
@ 8:03 pm
Normally I don’t cook, I uncook! But I remember the furor over this bread from when it first broke on the scene, and I vowed someday to try it. Then I totally forgot until I came across this delightfully entertaining video, which made it seem so do-able! Everyone at my house is enjoying the home baked, crust-tastic bready goodness with soup. Perfect!
Thanks so much Missbhavens!!!
November 6, 2007
@ 1:04 am
[…] Now | Play in Popup | Download (1) AppleTV (960×540): Download (1) MissBHavens vlogged the most amazing sounding bread recipe awhile back. In fact, you should just go watch her video about it - it’s much more […]
November 7, 2007
@ 9:29 am
[…] more self-confidence in your bread-baking vlogger chick? You want the recipe written down? Then check out MissBHaven’s exemplary good eatin’ vlog post about the no knead bread. You want a piece of me? You want a piece of […]
December 16, 2007
@ 4:06 pm
just made this bread.
omg heavenly. i will never make any other kind of bread again!!
December 28, 2007
@ 11:54 am
[…] the same thing as this, why would you?). I first heard about it in Miss Bekah Havens’ video Make-A-The-Bread and really, my life has not been the same since. Go make it, you will not be sorry! I […]
February 19, 2008
@ 10:03 pm
we made-a-the-bread, and we’re glad we did! thanks so much for sharing!!
July 6, 2008
@ 1:01 pm
ohhh, looking forward to trying this out and will report back, thanks every so much Miss B!
August 5, 2010
@ 9:28 am
Thanks for the recipe idea. I will be trying it out.
August 20, 2010
@ 5:27 am
great post, I enjoyed reading your site. Ill have to bookmark it and read more of it later. How soon do you update?