I love this No Knead bread

Now that summer has been slowly receding, I've been back into making bread.  Unfortunately, I think I neglected my sourdough starter and it's not quite the same, even though I've been baking it in my dutch oven--which makes the most beautiful crust.  But I still haven't been getting the chewy holey-ness inside.  I would probably fault my crappy kneading skills, though a friend's mom said I need to get a standing mixer with a kneading paddle.

So then I thought about the original No Knead bread recipe that Linda originally posted about and thought I'd give it a try since kneading dough is not my friend and it was only reaching 80 today--brrrr!  Get the oven on!

The ingredients are pretty simple:

Dissolve 1/4 tsp of active dry yeast in 1 1/2 cups of warm water.  Stir in 3 cups of all purpose flour and 1 1/2 tsp salt until blended.  It'll be sticky and pretty slack.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rest at least 8 hours (up to 18 hours) at room temperature.  The recipe says room temperature is about 70 degrees but my a/c thermostat is set at 78 but it seems it was all right.  The dough is ready when the surface is dotted with bubbles:

Then you flour the work surface and scrape the dough on it.  Sprinkle the dough lightly with flour and fold it over on itself a couple of times:

Cover with plastic wrap and let it rest for 15 minutes.  Using enough flour to keep dough from sticking to your hands and work surface, form into a ball.  Then generously coat a dish towel with flour and put the dough ball, seam side down on it.  I didn't have a clean dish towel, so I used parchment paper:

Then dust with more flour and cover with another clean dish towel.  Let rise for 1-2 hours until doubles in size and dough doesn't spring back when you poke it.  I couldn't help but notice that it doubled out but not up.  I wonder if using a dish towel would have been more grippy, allowing less slide of dough out.

Put dutch oven in the oven and preheat to 475 degrees about 20 minutes.  Flip dough into the hot dutch oven, ostensibly seam side up, though mine didn't have much of a seam.  Is it because I didn't use a dish towel?  I'll have to test that out.

Bake 30 minutes with lid on, the 15 minutes more with the lid off.  There's that golden brown crust:

And more so, that chewy, holey inside:

The girl and I ate half the loaf in one sitting. She loved it. I would have loved it more if it was more taller and loafy instead of such a wide, flatter boule. Hope using the dish towel works during the second rise helps. Also, I'm wondering if I could add sourdough starter to this somehow? Anybody know breadmaking science a lot more than me and have advice?

Anyhoo, I highly recommend this bread--if you've got a Dutch Oven, it won't disappoint. It's cheap and easy (NO KNEADING!) and the result is virtually artisan bread!

UPDATE: Yes, using a dish towel (instead of parchment paper) made a huge difference:

It definitely rose more "up" than out.

There's the big beautiful boule I wanted!

Gorgeous.  Sigh.

Here's a little side by side comparison:

Definitely a favorite.

PS

Still AMAZED how beautiful bread comes out baked in a Dutch Oven:

That crisp golden crust and its chewy insides--I could eat that whole loaf in one sitting with my bare hands. I've been making these sourdough loaves every week. Good thing I'm carbo-loading for the Camp Pendleton Mud Run.

Bread baking and a Dutch Oven

I've been making extra-tangy sourdough bread with a sourdough starter I had gotten from King Arther Flour company but it wasn't quite as perfectly awesome as sourdough bread should be.  It had good flavor but I was getting these dull loaves.  Though I'm sure my kneading skills still need work, when I visited Linda and had the bread she baked in the dutch oven, I knew I had to try it as soon as I was gifted with a dutch oven for my birthday.

The recipe makes two loaves so I baked one in a preheated dutch oven (put it the oven while it preheated) and one on the baking sheet as advised in the recipe.  The baking sheet loaf was done first after 30 minutes so we started eating it, then at 45 minutes I checked in on the loaf in the dutch oven.  My jaw dropped when I opened the lid.  Look at this beauty--it's like a magazine!

Here's a little side-by-side comparison (sorry, we obviously still ate the less amazing loaf when it came out of the oven).  The one baked in the dutch oven just had an amazing golden crispy crust--I just wanted to tear it apart with my hands--unlike my grayish other loaf.

It's hard to tell but I think it may have rose a little more than the baking sheet loaf as well.  I would still love it to be even more holey but this was an excellent loaf.

If you're not convinced to try baking a loaf in a dutch oven, I highly recommend trying it out. I'm definitely a convert. I can't imagine not baking bread in the dutch oven again!

Linda's bread

I'm visiting California for my friend's baby shower and I got to stay with my friend Linda, who baked this delicious cheese bread:

I remember she posted about a no-knead bread recipe that came out perfect because it was baked in a Dutch Oven.

And it WAS. The crust was perfectly crispy, and well, crusty. And then on top of that, the inside was perfectly holey and chewy. The recipe is for a plain loaf, but she added asiago and other hard cheeses, inside and out. So good.

I have GOT to get a dutch oven!