Bittman's No Knead Bread

First of all, I really just need to say Bittman is the mother fucking man and he goes hard in the paint. Never forget that. Secondly, this recipe is amazingly simple, hard to fuck up, and legit impresses everyone. Only issue I foresee, for some, is you need some sort of oven safe pot with a lid like a dutch oven or enamel pot. This recipe works because there are essentially two cooking stages: one where you are essentially steaming the bread then another to further crustify the bread (crustify is actually a word). It also banks on the use of very little yeast and long rise time to ensure a proper crumb.

Qty	Ingredient	Procedure
3 cups	all purpose flour (bread flour works well too) & additional for dusting (more Tony Montana than Cornell sorority line)1	Combine the flour, yeast, and salt all together. Add the water and mix together until it is incorporated. Cover the bowl with saran wrap and leave undisturbed for 12 to 18 hours. Fold your dough over once and let sit for 15 minutes or so. Lay out a piece of parchment paper and put a heavy dusting of flour. Ball your dough like you would any other dough and put it seam side down. Put another healthy dusting of flour on top of the dough and place a tea towel on top of that. Let sit and rise for 2 hours. About an hour and fifteen minutes into the rise, preheat the oven to 450°F. Once preheated, place your pot and lid in the oven to heat up for at least 30 more minutes (this should be in time with your dough finishing its rising process) This is the messy bit. Take your pot out of the oven and remove the lid in preparation for the dough. Put your hand under the ball of dough between the parchment paper and the dough; flip the ball of dough into the pot. To make this super clear, you are flipping the dough, what was once the top should now be touching the bottom of your super heated pot. Shake the pot around to get the dough roughly centered (this is not critical). Put the lid back on. Cook with the lid on for 30 minutes. Afterwards cook for an additional 15-30 minutes to brown the top. Once done place on a wire rack to cool. Much like meat, bread needs a little bit of time before cutting so make sure to give the bread 10-15 minutes to rest. If this shit doesn’t impress whoever you’re making it for they are either an ungrateful asshole or a bread snob (those two are not mutually exclusive).
1 5/8 cups	water
1/4 tsp	yeast
1 1/2 tsp	kosher salt

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1. Half the flour can be substituted for whole wheat flour if you’re into that. ↩