Bread that does not suck

I've never been too into baking.  Cakes & cookies are easy and a bit too formulaic for me to enjoy making.  You mess up too much on a measurement when baking you get glop, with spaghetti sauce you get a new recipe.  When it comes to bread though I've never made a good loaf until now.  Kneading and salt amounts have always been my downfall, but no longer I've found a book on no knead breads and the first one was awesome.

My most awesome wife gets the props on this one as she saw a segment on the Martha Stewart show on the no knead breads and convinced me to put it on my amazon wish list.  Lo and behold I got it as a present (I also have a 1000$ swiss army knife up there so it's not too odd that I got the cookbook instead). The real beauty of this bread is that instead of slaving and kneading for hours I literally spent less than 15 minutes of work on this.  So in your scheduling treat it more like a slow cooker recipe than as "MAKING BREAD"

The basic recipe is
3 cups bread flour, 1 tsp salt, one packet of yeast and 1 1/3 cups of water.
You start by mixing all the dry stuff in a big bowl.  Add in the water and stir to incorporate.  Do not over stir you want a moist sticky consistency.  Add water in small amounts if you are too dry.  Also start by adding only one cup just in case the humidity is working against you.

Now store it in a cool dry place for 18 hours.  Yes 18 hours of a slow rise.  I covered the bowl with a damp towel and forgot about it.  After the first rise I turned the dough out of the bowl and formed it into a ball with the seam on the bottom (the book has tons of good pictures) dusted the whole thing with flour and set it in a tea towel to rise for 2 hours (ok it was a clean burp cloth who really has tea towels hinging around any more).

Now they suggest baking in a closed pot.  I don't have a pot that can take 475 degrees so I used a clay baker that has a top and a bottom.  Once the oven was pre-heated I dumped the dough ball in seam side up, slapped on the lid and set the oven timer for 30 minutes.  After the 30 minutes I took the top off and let it bake for 15 more minutes.

Now comes the magic, with my tongs i pulled out the bread and set it on a wire rack to cool.  Now wait a minute and listen to the bread.  You will hear it crack and hiss.  This is moisture escaping from the interior and is a good sign you did things right.  I did the rye variety (substitute 3/4ths a cup of rye flour for an equal amount of your bread flour) and it is sooo yummy.  The bread has small holes that would make it a good candidate for a sandwich bread or a great container for melted cheese.

So my bread failure streak has ended.  Next I want to try their pizza dough.