Bread Winner

  

'Inexperienced  housekeepers and amateur cooks will find it a good general rule to attempt at the beginning only a few things, and learn to do those things perfectly. And these should be, not the elaborate dishes of special occasions, but the plain every-day things. Where can one better begin than with bread?

With good digestion, honest personal pride, and the grateful admiration of the family circle as rewards, surely no girl or woman who aspires to responsibilities and joys of home, will shrink from the labor of learning to make bread.'

Buffalo Cake and Indian Pudding 

circa 1887,Dr. A.W. Chase

Much like Dr. Chase's aspirational home-making girl, I recently came to the conclusion that the ability to bake a classic & crusty loaf of bread might be both a necessary and a lovely thing. Bread! The possibilities are endless! But for a weekly loaf that works just as well for breakfast toast as it does for afternoon sandwiches and as a carrier for delicious cheese, I'm hooked on Mark Bittman's wildly popular no-knead recipe and technique.

 

It's just this easy: combine 3 cups of all-purpose or bread flour*, 1/4 teaspoon dry yeast, 1 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1 5/8 cups water. The main ingredient for this recipe is time: it does require a bit of planning ahead. After you've combined the ingredients and blended them together until it forms a slightly 'shaggy' ball, the dough should rest, covered in plastic wrap, for 12 to 18 hours in a draft-free area. I like to put the dough in an olive oil coated glass bowl covered with plastic wrap and tuck it away in the microwave (off, of course) while it rises.

*You can play around with different proportions of wheat and white, if you like. My favorite is still the all white bread flour version.

When the dough is ready, flour a work surface and your hands and fold the dough over on itself a few times. Cover it with plastic again and let it rest for about 20 minutes.

After that first little rise, form the dough into a ball and set it on a clean, floured kitchen towel. Coat another towel with a dusting of flour and cover the loaf. Let it rise for about 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees with an 8 quart cast iron lidded pot in the oven as it heats. Let the oven heat for at least a half hour before the loaf is ready to cook. When the loaf has nearly doubled in size and the oven is ready, carefully (very carefully!) remove the pot from the oven and place the dough, with plenty of flour or cornmeal on the bottom of the loaf, into the pan. At this point, I like to cut a short slice into the top to control the cracking and expansion of the loaf, but any pattern or no slice at all will work just as well!

Put the pan with the lid on back in the oven (again, carefully!) and bake for about 30 minutes. Remove the lid and continue to bake for 15 to 30 minutes... in my oven, about 20 minutes with the lid off is enough time for a golden brown loaf with a crunchy crust.

Let cool on a rack for as long as you can wait before slicing into the warm, crusty delicious-ness of it!