Does the thought of baking bread from scratch sound too difficult to you? Then you have to try this easy no-knead bread!
I love baking; I love to bake cookies, cupcakes, and muffins from scratch, but baking bread from scratch always seemed too difficult. I don’t have a bread machine, and I was always worried that I wouldn’t knead my bread properly and end up with a dense loaf of bread.
So when Chief MOM Laura sent this recipe for me to try, I was nervous at first, but very excited! No-knead bread? So simple that even I could do it? I was up for the challenge. And let me tell you—this was not a challenge!
This recipe is so simple and easy that anyone can do it. I’ve never made bread from scratch before, and I did it!
You can easily whip this together after dinner, combining the flour, yeast, salt, and water until the dough forms. Cover the dough and let it rest overnight, at least 12 hours. I let mine rest for about 14 hours.
This is why it’s perfect to do after dinner. You just sleep as the dough does its magic. The next morning, you wake up to a lot more dough, and by the time it’s ready, you’ll see a lot of little bubbles throughout the top of the dough.
You fold the dough into itself, and let it rise for about two more hours. Then you pop the dough into a covered oven-safe pot and place it into the oven. Soon you will be salivating at the smells coming from your oven.
My whole family loved the smell of the bread while it baked in the oven. It was very difficult to let this bread cool completely! We were not only all surprised at how delicious this bread was, but how simple it was to make!
I used what I had to make this bread: all-purpose flour, but you could also use baking flour. You could also dust the dough with cornmeal or wheat bran instead of using more flour.
You could easily slice up some of this bread and serve it with lunch the next day, MOMables style.
No-Knead Bread
- Yield: One 1 ½ pound loaf of bread 1x
- Cuisine: Baking
Ingredients
- 3 cups all-purpose flour or bread flour
- ¼ teaspoon instant yeast
- 1 ¼ teaspoons salt
- 1 ⅝ cups water (1 ½ cups plus 2 tablespoons)
Instructions
- In a large bowl, combine the flour, yeast, and salt.
- Add the water, and stir until blended.
- Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let the dough rest for at least 12 hours.
- Lightly flour your work surface and place the dough on it. Sprinkle the dough with flour and fold it over on itself once or twice.
- Cover loosely with plastic wrap, and let it rest for another 15 minutes.
- Shape the dough into a ball (using more flour if needed).
- Coat a cotton towel with flour, and put the dough seam side down. Cover with another cotton towel, and let the dough rise for 2 hours.
- Preheat the oven to 450F about half an hour before the dough is ready. Put a 4- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (like pyrex or cast iron) in the oven as it heats.
- When the dough is ready, carefully place it into the pot, seam side up.
- Cover the pot with a lid, and bake for 30 minutes.
- Remove the lid, and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes.
- Allow the bread to cool fully before slicing.
charmaine
This is such an easy recipe. Can i bake the above recipe with gluten free flour too?
MOMables
unfortunately not.