It’s just so tasty. I get the feeling from reading about the effects of refined carbohydrates on my body that this stuff has the same effect as snorting the ground up butts from a train station ashtray, but so be it.
This is, of course, based on the famous New York Times article on No-knead Bread.
3 c. King Art. bread flour
1.5 tsp. salt
.5 tsp yeast
1 Tbsp. honey
~1.5 c. water (filtered is best it seems)
Mix the dry stuff in a big bowl. Mix a cup or so of the water, the honey, and the yeast in a cup. Let it sit a bit until it gets a little foamy. Don’t worry about it. It’ll work either way. I just find that kick-starting it cuts down on the time I need to let the whole mess sit around. For that matter, you can dump it all into the bowl at once and mix it there.
Mix everything (including the rest of the water) together until you have it pretty well integrated. It should be a sloppy mess, more or less. Try to mix it in such that you don’t need to add a lot of extra water, but do add some if you can’t get the flour to join the party. Cover that up and let it sit overnight.
The next day (12 or so hours later), you’ll have a fluffy bowl of bubbly goop. I oil my hands and peel it away from the sides and form a ball with it (fold it over a couple of times). Let that rest for a bit (10-15 minutes). After that, if it’s too sticky, I knead it just a bit on a heavily floured board. Otherwise, I turn it out on said board, form it into a ball and transfer it to one half of a heavily floured dish towel. I fold the other half of the towel over the dough, and let that rise for a couple of hours or until the dough seems ready (puffy, springy, etc.)
OK, so, about 1/2 hour before you figure that’s going to be ready, stick a dutch oven into the oven. Heat the oven to 425.
When it’s hot, dump the dough in to the dutch oven, give it a little shake, spray it with some water from a mister, and pop the lid back on. Be REAL careful with that pan. It is very, very hot. Once or twice as it’s baking, I’ll spray it again with a little water (again being VERY careful, having learned the hard way) and replace the lid.
15 minutes or so later, you can remove the lid and continue baking until the bread is nice and brown. Take it out, dump out the bread onto a board, and let it cool. As much as you can bring yourself to let it cool. I usually make it a few minutes.
Now, try not to eat the whole loaf. It is, after all, going to give you late-onset diabetes and cancer of the who-knows-what. Still, it’s real tasty.
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