"No-Knead Bread" Is a Terrible Name!

I’ve never been particularly trendy as a cook or as a person. Perhaps this is why it has taken me longer than most to jump on the “no-knead bread” bandwagon.

Many home and professional cooks ran out and made a loaf shortly after reading Mark Bittman’s ground-breaking column in The New York Times in November 2006. I have heard stories (probably apocryphal but fun nevertheless) that grocery stores ran out of rapid-rising yeast, an ingredient called for in Bittman’s formula, that day.

The recipe Bittman used came from Jim Lahey of Manhattan’s Sullivan Street Bakery. Lahey has since published My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method.

From 2006 until 2010 I was unmoved by all this brouhaha. “So what if it doesn’t require kneading,” I thought. I don’t mind kneading bread. It’s a simple, enjoyable task that doesn’t take very long. When I’ve been writing for several hours I love the physical break kneading provides.
Two people changed my mind. One was my young friend Erin Cosby, who called this bread “the best around.” The other is my sister food blogger Abigail Blake of Sugar Apple, who wrote that her no-knead loaf was “as close to Parisian bread as [she was] going to get in the Caribbean.”

(Abigail lives on the island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, lucky girl that she is. I try to remind myself that she doesn’t get gorgeous foliage color in the fall, but it’s hard not to envy her a little in mud season!)

So I tried the bread. It was amazing. Note to Mark Bittman and Jim Lahey: “No-Knead Bread” is a misleading name. It should be called AWESOME Bread. Or Parisian Bread. Or Artisan Bread. Or anything that emphasizes the product rather than the process.

The bread works because it combines just a little bit of yeast and a LOT of water with the basic flour/salt mixture. It then lets them rise together for a really long time. The process concludes by baking the bread in a preheated pot in a really hot oven, which almost replicates a brick oven.
The bread emerges with a gorgeous, crispy crust and a porous texture. It shouts, “I was made in a special way!”

I’ve tried a few variations. Bittman later proposed making bread almost as good by using more yeast and letting the bread sit for less time. (You’ll note that his original recipe takes about a day.) I encourage you to try this method.

For my most recent loaf I added some nice salty Greek olives to the mixture. This is the version for which I share the recipe.

If you don’t want to use the olives, decrease the yeast to 1/3 teaspoon (1/4 teaspoon if you’re using instant yeast) and increase the salt to 1-1/2 teaspoons. (To tell you the truth, if you ARE using the olives you may omit the salt altogether; Greek olives are salty! But I love salt.)

The biggest trick to making this bread may be selecting the pan. You need a heavy pan with a volume of 4-1/2 t 5 quarts that can withstand a 450-degree oven.

Erin tells me she uses a large covered Pyrex pan. I use my mother’s old Le Creuset Dutch oven, which doesn’t have a plastic lid-grabber. (Its grabber is made of the same enameled cast iron as the rest of the pan.)

If your pot has a plastic lid-grabber, I am told that you may unscrew it and put foil in its place. (Opening the pot may be harder in this case.) Amazon.com sells Lahey's book along with a 5-quart Lodge cast-iron Dutch oven that looks useful (and a lot less costly than my beloved Le Creuset).

One more variation: If you want to use instant or rapid-rise yeast, the water should be lukewarm instead of hot as mine was for regular yeast.

Happy baking—and eating.

Super Duper Olive Bread

Ingredients:

3 cups bread flour
1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)
3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
3/4 cup Greek olives, drained of all brine and chopped in half vertically
1-1/2 cups hot but not boiling water

Instructions:

The day before you want to eat your bread, combine the flour, salt, and yeast in a bowl large enough to hold more than 2 quarts of dough. Stir in the olives, followed by the water. Mix with a wooden spoon until it the dough is combined (it will be messy!), about 30 seconds.

Cover the bowl loosely and let it sit in a warm place until the dough doubles in size and bubbles form on the surface, 12 to 18 hours. Do not put the dough on a radiator (I speak from experience) as it will dry out.

Generously dust a board with flour, and using 2 wet spatulas dump the dough onto the board. Lift the edges of the dough with the spatulas into the center and nudge it into the shape of a ball.

Nudging the Bread

Dust a linen dishtowel with flour, and use the spatulas to pop the dough onto it, seam side down. If the dough is sticky (it always is, in my experience), dust the top with flour or cornmeal. Fold the ends of the dishtowel around the dough so that it is loosely covered. Allow it to rise in a warm spot for 2 hours, or until it holds the hole when you poke your finger into it.

About 1/2 hour before the second rising is complete, preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Place a covered 4-1/2- to 5-quart pot on a rack in the lower third of the oven and allow it to preheat along with the oven.

When the half hour is complete, use heavy pot holders to remove the pot from the oven and uncover it. Gently but quickly slide the bread dough into the pot, shaking the pot a little to distribute it in its ball.

Cover the pot and replace it in the oven. Bake for 30 minutes; then uncover the pot and bake for 15 to 30 minutes more, until the bread is a gorgeous brown color. Carefully remove the pot once more and use pot holders or a heat-proof spatula to remove the bread from it. Allow it to cool on a rack.

Makes 1 gorgeous, aromatic loaf.

Here is the bread without olives (but with more salt and less yeast), also fabulous.

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