Bake My Day / No-Knead Bread

I don't know a person who wouldn't like freshly baked bread. It smells so yummy and tastes heavenly! But making your own bread is so much work and you don't know how to do it. Right?

Not anymore! I found this kick ass recipe for No-Knead Bread that I have fallen in love with. It only takes couple minutes to prepare, no heavy mixing or kneading, just simply stir and forget the dough until next day. Baking bread couldn't be any easier than this! A four year old could make this and it would still taste fantastic.

Yeah, this bread also tastes really good. It is has a crispy crust and fluffy moist inside. Since the dough has lots of time to proof, the baked bread has a deep and delicious flavor. Not like store bought bread that only has 30-60 minutes for the dough to rise. When you only have little time for the proofing, you need more yeast, thus the bread taste more yeast than anything else. Since this bread has all the time in the world and very little yeast, the proofing creates nice and mature flavors for the bread.

I got this recipe from a Finnish women's magazine about a year ago but it is originally from New York Times recipe that was adapted from Jim Lahey's Sullivan Street Bakery in Manhattan NY, USA. And I am sorry to my friend Emily. She asked for this recipe sometime ago when I first made this bread, but I never gave it her. But here it is finally. Better late than never. And now everybody else can have it too!

For this bread you will need 4 simple ingredients that everybody has in their kitchen. This recipe will make one 1½-pound loaf.
Ingredients:
- 3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting (8 dl)
-¼ teaspoon dry yeast
-1¼ teaspoons salt
- appx. 1 ½ cups cold water (4 dl)

This time I used 5dl of organic wheat flour and 3dl of organic rye flour. But any flour you have will do. I just like to add rye because it has more fibers and it tastes good.

First you measure the flour, salt and yeast in a bowl. Mix them well.

Then I like to make a little well in the flour before pouring the water in. This way it is easier and faster to mix the water into the flour.

Pour in the cold water and mix quickly. Don't mix too much, just enough that all the flour has gotten moist.

And here comes the best part; cover the bowl with a plastic wrap and let the dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18 hours, at warm room temperature. That's it! Now you just leave the dough to hang out by itself while you go do your own thing.

The next day....

You know the dough is ready when the surface of it starts to bubble like this.

Take a clean kitchen towel and sprinkle it with flour. Take the dough and put in on the towel. Flatten the dough with your hands. This helps the dough to have less air bubbles.

Fold the sides of the dough to the middle.

Wrap the sides of the towel gently around the dough. Let the dough to rise for another 2 hours.

Heat the oven to 225C / 435F. When you start the oven, place a pan or a pot in the oven to heat up as well. Make sure your pan/pot can be put in the oven, so you don't ruin your pan/pot. Cast iron pans work really good. Once the oven is heated up, take the pan out and place the dough on the pan. Don't worry if the dough doesn't look so nice and smooth. It will even out in the oven.

Cover the pan with a lid for the first 30 minutes. Then take the lid off and bake for another 20 minutes.

The bread is done when you knock on the bread and it sounds hollow. Place the hot bread on a wire rack to cool.

Voilá! Here's the bread.


Yummy inside.
You only need salty butter on top of this delicious bread.


Go ahead, start baking! You'll love this bread too.