No-knead bread!
Apparently this no-knead bread thing was all the rage among the food-blogging set a while ago, but I’m a little behind the times. I was looking for bread recipes, and came across this “Faster No-Knead Bread“ by Mark Bittman in the NYT. It looked really easy, so I gave it a try, and oh wow, it’s the best bread I’ve ever made. Not that I’ve made a whole lot of bread, but anyway. I wanted to make the whole-wheat version, but only had 1 cup whole wheat flour. So I ended up making the white version but with 1 cup whole wheat and 2 cups white.
The great thing is that it’s super easy- all you do is mix up your dough and leave it in a bowl for 4 hours, and then bake it, and voila. The crust even gets nice and flaky/crispy like bakery bread. The secret to that is baking it in a covered dish. I didn’t know this before, but apparently professional bakers use special steam-injected ovens which is what causes those flaky crusts. So basically by baking in a covered dish, you’re making an oven inside an oven.
This recipe is a variant on one that came out in 2006, which uses just a tiny amount of yeast and sits for 18 hours. I tried that one but it didn’t work so well as the 4-hour version. It didn’t rise as much- maybe it got too cold in my apartment overnight or something. So, I’m sticking with the 4-hour version!