Well . . .
I was going to show you one of the fun projects I’ve been working on lately, but my camera has gone MIA. And since my semi-intelligent phone is smart enough to take photos, but its semi-intelligent owner can’t figure out how to get the photos off said phone, I’m having to go illustration-free until the camera comes out of hiding.
So I thought I’d chat about this bread I’ve been baking. When I saw the recipe on Facebook, I looked it over and showed it to my friend and fellow-baker, Kerri. “That won’t work will it?” I asked. “I don’t see how it can…it wouldn’t have any flavor,” she replied. So we blew it off.
Until Vikki started bragging about how she’d made the bread and how delicious it was. So I tried it. And it really is yummy, even with only four ingredients. It’s a soft bread with a chewy crust that makes excellent toast. It’s super-easy to make, too, it just takes some time. Between the easy-peasy-ness of it and the limited ingredients required I’ve pretty much stopped buying bread. Why spend all that money when you can stir up a loaf of this goodness with almost nothing in almost no time? Now that I’ve got the regular version down I’m going to try different flours; I have a bag of oat flour from Bob’s Red Mill that’s crying out to be used.
So with many thanks to the anonymous baker who created it, here’s the recipe. I’d show you a photo of my latest loaf, but since I can’t you’ll just have to try it.
Crusty Bread
3 cups unbleached flour
1 ¾ teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon Instant (or Rapid Rise) yeast
1 ½ cups water
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and yeast. Add water and mix until a shaggy mixture forms. Cover bowl with plastic wrap (unless you have a bowl with a lid, in which case use that) and set aside for 12-18 hours. Overnight works great, or you can mix it up in the morning and go off to work looking forward freshly baked bread at dinner.
12-18 hours later . . . Heat oven to 450 degrees. Once oven is hot, place a cast iron pot with a lid (like a Dutch oven) in the oven and heat (both pot and lid) for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, flop dough onto heavily-floured surface and shape into a soft ball with your heavily-floured hands. Cover it with the upturned bowl and let rest while your pot is heating.
When pot is hot, remove lid and place dough inside. [My pot is heavy, so I generally pull the oven rack out with the handy wooden pot-rack-puller-outer I got from my friendly neighborhood firemen, carefully remove the pot lid, and flop the dough in the pot. The dough is too soft to worry much about the shape.] Cover with lid and bake for 30 minutes. At this point you may remove the lid and bake for an additional 15 minutes, but I never remember to do that and mine to come out just fine. Thump on the bread’s crust if you want to check—if it sounds hollow, it’s probably done.
Remove bread from oven and place on rack to cool. Try to restrain yourself from tearing it apart and slathering hot chunks of bread with butter for at least 15 minutes, it’s better for the bread’s texture if you do. I generally leave the room at this point to keep temptation at bay.
After bread has cooled, slice (or rip apart with your bare hands if you prefer) and enjoy! You’ll need a serrated knife to get through the chewy crust, but the inside is pillow soft. It toasts like a dream, makes fabulous garlic bread, and is perfectly appropriate for sandwiches. In my Dutch oven it comes out in a round loaf, but I’ve never been picky about the shape of my sandwiches.
I guess it just goes to show that sometimes you have to “taste and see” to find out that something is good!
NOTE: I have now tried it with half wheat flour / half white flour and . . . not so fabulous. It makes the bread too heavy. It was edible but didn’t have the light texture and tangy taste of the original. But you never know until you try, right?
It’s true. you won’t even believe it could work and then poof. deliciousness. 🙂
Isn’t it scrumptious! I’ve seen several Pinterest posts too. Apparently this is just basic bread from the advent of yeast bread making, although a few blog posts I’ve seen point to a New York newspaper publishing the recipe a few decades ago. Any heavy pot with a lid will do, as long as the handles can take the heat. I put my 3.5 quart stainless steel sauce pan and lid in the cold oven and let them heat up together, adding 15-20 minutes to be sure the pan, not just the air, is heated through. That way I don’t have the oven on so long. (Maybe I’ll change my method if the weather ever cools.) I have had to quit making this for a while, because leaving the room wasn’t working for me. As you alluded to, you have to exercise if you make this — exercise some self control that is, and don’t eat it all in one sitting.