Bread-baking always has been a lot like lovemaking. It requires good chemistry, just the right feel, leavening and to achieve truly great results, you really have to be in the mood.
There’s also endless mystery surrounding the process.
Temperature is critical, handling is important, moisture is essential and patience is key.
But when it’s good, it’s amazing, and everybody wants to know your secret.
So it should come as no surprise that one of the most e-mailed stories from The New York Times for days – through election upheavals, a war, even Britney Spears’ divorce – has been a recipe published Nov. 8 for “No-Knead Bread.”
Now, as someone who has been baking bread for a very long time, I was fully prepared to hate this.
I have coddled sourdough starters, nurtured sponges and sprayed water on crusts trying to create the ultimate chewy, crispy, tasty loaf.
Bread-making is not supposed to be easy, I’ve insisted as others dumped packaged bread mixes into electric machines and ridiculed me as a culinary anachronism.
Through it all I have remained steadfast.
Making bread is supposed to be sensuous. Since my college roommate taught me how to bake, I have mixed, kneaded and lovingly shaped dough into baguettes and boules and loaves of all sizes.
It’s a ritual so timeless it’s Old Testament material and a great way to spend a winter afternoon at home while the snow accumulates outside.
Or at least it was.
Leave it to The New York Times to turn me into a shameless no-knead slut.
I tried the recipe and even though it felt like cheating, it was good. Really good.
The recipe is credited to Jim Lahey, a New York baker, and it produces a single loaf that is crusty, flavorful and has perfect texture.
It’s also foolproof.
I did just about everything wrong and still produced a terrific loaf – at 5,280 feet above sea level, no less.
I started by using instant yeast that had expired two months ago. Anybody who bakes knows this is a bad, bad thing. But I didn’t have time to race to the store, so I tossed it in, figuring I’d only be out a few cups of flour if I had to throw the whole mess out.
Instead of letting the dough rise in the prescribed 70-degree house, I set it on the kitchen counter in our 63-degree house.
I got too busy, so I let it go for 24 hours for the first rise instead of the recommended 12 to 18 hours. And then the second rise was something like four hours instead of two because we were at a nice brunch and didn’t want to leave.
In other words, I had no right to expect anything but disaster.
But it was fantastic.
It looked beautiful. It had a crust even an Italian grandmother would love. And it was delicious plain, though eating it hot from the oven dripping with melted butter was, well, a little slice of heaven.
Denver Post columnist Diane Carman can be reached at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
The New York Times No-Knead Bread
Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery. Time: About 1 1/2 hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising. Makes 1 1 1/2-pound loaf.
Ingredients
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed
Directions
In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.
Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.
Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8- quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is OK. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.
