NO WORK NO KNEAD BREAD

No Work No Knead Bread image

We've been eating homemade bread for several months now -- ever since I found no-knead bread, which is pretty viral on the web. There's even a video of a very young boy making it so that tells you how easy it is. It takes many hours but hardly any work. Stir - Wait - Stir - Wait - Flop - Wait - Bake - Wait - Eat....

Provided by Heidi Hoerman

Time 13h

Number Of Ingredients 7

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Ingredients

1 c bread flour
1 pkg double-acting yeast
1 c water
3 c bread flour
1 Tbsp coarse salt
1/4 c fruity olive oil
1 c water

Steps:

1. Before you go to bed, stir together 1 cup flour, 1 cup water, and the packet of yeast in a large mixing bowl. Don't worry about lumps. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside. Let the yeast do its work while you sleep.
2. In the morning, stir in the remaining three cups flour, salt, olive oil, and the second cup of water. Try to get most of the lumps out. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside. Let it do its work while you do your morning activities. In a coupla-few hours, the dough swells to at least double its size. It may reach the plastic wrap. If it's a cool day, do this in the oven with the light on to make a warm place.
3. Remove the plastic wrap and "stir down" the dough. It will lose about half it's size. Flop the dough into a pan lined with parchment paper. (The loaf of bread in the picture was made in the kind of oval roaster one might use to cook fish, but I've used everything from bread pans to salad bowls. The most important thing is the parchment paper because the bread will stick like concrete to anything else.)
4. Let the dough grow again until it almost doubles. Do not cover it with plastic wrap as pulling off the wrap will make it collapse again.
5. When it has grown, preheat the oven to 440F and put a rack in the middle. When the oven is hot, put the pan of bread in the center of the oven and bake for 20 minutes.
6. After 20 minutes, lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees and continue to bake for an additional 40 minutes.
7. Remove from the oven and flop the bread out of the pan and paper. Optionally, put it back in the now turned off oven for a few minutes to crisp up the sides and bottom further. Cool set up on a rack or just balanced on the pan it cooked in as shown in the picture.