Easy, No-Knead Artisan Bread
I used to be intimidated by bread baking. I thought it was a monumental task that only homemakers invested in … mixing, kneading, waiting for rises, expensive stand mixers with dough hooks, etc. I hate to admit it, but I went to the grocery store and bought the mini loaves of “artisan” bread trucked in from California.
My excuse for not baking bread from scratch was that I didn’t have the time, nor the fancy equipment. Enter no-knead bread — a magical mixture of flour, salt, yeast, water and time. The world of homemade, thick-crusted, moist-crumbed, real artisan bread opened up to me, and it will for you, too.
After seeing a blurb about Jim Lahey’s book My Bread (W.W. Norton & Co. Inc., 2009) in a magazine, I was intrigued, and rushed out to get it. According to Lahey, anyone could easily make no-knead, artisan-style bread in their home kitchen with a minimal amount of time, equipment and effort. Really? It all sounded too good to be true … but as it turned out, it wasn’t.
The following method of bread making takes a bit of forethought, some mixing, and a lot of time in between. It’s a “slow rise” method in which the flavor is a result of slow fermentation, and the texture is the result of baking in a cast-iron pot. The yeast is eased to life over 12 to 18 hours, rather than shocked to life with warm water and sugar (this type of bread doesn’t require any added sugar at all). The ingredients are pure and simple — the white loaf calls for flour, salt, yeast, water —
