Homemade bread
23 Dec
This bread has a nice crunchy coat on the outside, while the inside is soft and chewy! Can you smell the fresh baked bread goodness? It smells wonderful! (Sorry. I hate it when people do that on television and here I am, doing it to you!)
Apparently, this no knead bread recipe was all the rage long before I started reading food blogs. I learned about it here and decided that it’s time I try my hand at breadmaking.
No Knead Bread
Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising
Ingredients:
3 cups of bread flour, more for dusting
1 5/8 cups of water
1¼ teaspoons of salt
¼ teaspoon of instant yeast
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed
Procedure:
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. (I let it sit on top of my stove for about 24 hours).
2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles.
3. 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.
4. 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 in a warm place. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
5. 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.
6. 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.
This was only possible with my cousin’s beautiful dutch oven that she left behind! 
