Home Made No-Knead Bread

A few years ago I decided to try my hand at baking bread. After I got pretty good at it, I began to experiment, and came up with this recipe. I call it my "go to bread", because it's simple, practically fool proof, yummy and flexible. It takes a little waiting time, but make it ahead and you'll have the perfect dough on hand to quickly bake up some bread when you feel like it. ~~~Lynne

This recipe is for a small batch. It can make about 4 small loaves, 2 long baguettes or medium loaves.

Ingredients

1 cup flour
1/2 tablespoon Fletcher's "Rapid Rise" or "Bread Machine" yeast
dash of salt
squirt of honey (optional, if you don't have honey 1/2 teaspoon of sugar will do.
1/2 cup warm water (not HOT, yeast is a living thing, you don't want to scald it to death.)

Dough Preparation



1. Proof the yeast.
Add the yeast and honey (or sugar) to a bowl (A LARGE bowl, the dough is going to rise a lot), and dissolve it with the warm water. Let it sit for 5-10 minutes until you see the yeast is alive and "waking up". There will be little air bubbles visible.



2. Add the flour and salt to the bowl and blend it until you get a sticky, gummy dough.

3. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap but leave a little bit of air space. Let it sit for 2 hours at room temp (I usually let it sit on the top of the stove under the hood light).



After the 2 hours are up, put the bowl in the fridge. You can keep it in the fridge for anywhere from 2 hours to a week. The longer it's in the fridge, the tangier it gets... it will resemble the flavor of sourdough after 3 or 4 days.

Baking the Bread
When you're ready to bake some bread, sprinkle some more flour on top of the dough (this makes it easier to grab), grab some dough, and plop it onto a wood cutting board that's been coated with some more flour. If you want to add any seasonings (caraway or dill weed for example) to the dough, now is the time to do it. Mold the dough into whatever shape it is you want to make. Don't over work the dough and don't try to make it perfect... it's going to have a mind of its own anyway.



Place the shaped loaf of dough on whatever you plan to cook it on or in (greased), and sprinkle some more flour over the top. If you want to dress up the crust with poppy seed or sesame seed, now is the time to do that. Spritz a small amount of water on the top of the dough and add the seeds.

Now let the dough rise again (about an hour, depending on the size you want and how many air holes you want).

Bake at 425 in a preheated oven about 30 - 40 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. If you want a super crunchy crust, add 6 ice cubes to a heavy pot, and put them in the preheated oven at the same time as the bread.



It's pretty fool proof dough. Enjoy!