No Knead Bread

Jim Lahey of Sullivan St. Bakery's famed No-Knead bread dough = SUCCESS!

So easy. Recipe here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html

My adjustments:

1. More salt.

2. I used dry active yeast and activated it with a bit of warm water and sugar first. I've read in a few places that it still works just adding the dry active, but I wanted to be safe.

3. No 300 dollar dutch oven... I used a 12 dollar pizza stone. I did the 2nd rise on a flat pan with lots of cornmeal and flour and a towel covering. Preheated the stone with the oven (very important), and then slid my fully puffed dough onto the pizza stone and baked for 45 minutes to an hour. Make sure to cut a few slits into the dough to let out steam and prevent huge holes after baking.

4. Filled a small loaf pan with boiling water from a kettle and put it in the oven with my dough to create some sort of steam.


It's really the perfect crusty white loaf. Great for soups, great with butter, just great. You know when you get that bread served at a restaurant that looks really good, but then it's cold and stale, and you wonder what it tasted like when it was fresh. This is that.

-R