Classic Basic Bread Recipe

The essence of no knead baking is that a wonderful loaf of bread can be baked without bothering to knead the dough. Just mix a few ingredients, wait several hours, mix again, wait a little bit more, then bake. At the end, there it is, your own bundle of baked goodness.

Here is the basic recipe. Master this formula first. Read other posts to discover tasty and simple variations.


Mix the following three dry ingredients in a large bowl (a bowl quite a bit larger than the ingredients).

1. 4 cups of flour (see more advanced recipes for flour combinations. For your first attempt start with all-purpose flour. If you absolutely want to pimp up your recipe, use 1 cup of other flour, like whole wheat flour, as one of the four cups)

2. 3/8 teaspoon of active dry yeast. The amount doesn't have to be scientifically accurate. Add about halfway between 1/4 and 1/2 teaspoon.

3. 2 teaspoons of salt (keep the salt and yeast apart until they are mixed in the flour.I read somewhere that direct contact with salt stops the yeast's action -- but maybe I'm wrong about that.)

Mix these three ingredients together so the mixture is uniform.

Add 2 cups of room temperature water--which you've boiled and cooled in advance.

Blend the water into the dry ingredients until you get a nice dough (maybe 3-4 minutes or so). Scrape the bottom of the bowl to make sure all the ingredients are blended. Experience has taught that complete blending is better. Unmixed lumps could haunt you.

Cover the bowl with a large plastic bag or a tight fitting lid. They tell me yeast in anaerobic, so it's fine with the yeast if the container is sealed tightly.

Let the container sit for 18 hours. OK, 16 hours might be good. Maybe 14. I've even read a recipe that sits for only 4 hours--but I have witnessed that four hours doesn't do it to my liking. Use 18 hours as your 'ideal' until you've done your own experimenting and come up with a different time of your preference. EXTRA: I recently started mixing the ingredients in the morning and baking at night. That means the dough rises about 8 hours or so before the next step. The results are fine.

The recommended place to keep the covered bowl is in an unlit oven, since the surrounding heat is uniform. Some people say keeping the oven light on raises things to an ideal temperature for yeast. That's a variation I haven't tried. If the temperature is moderate where you are, you might leave the container on a counter top, not in the oven.

The next step is called 'punching down' by bakers. I do not follow the Breadtopia video here (see other posts for my homage to Breadtopia as my model). Please read my variation:

At the end of the 18 (or so) hours, take off the plastic bag or pot lid. The dough should be a bit bubbly. Here's where it's important that you use a large bowl, much larger than needed just to contain the ingredients alone. Take a rubberized or silicon scraper and scrape part of the dough off the side of the bowl. Fold the scraped-off part into the rest of the dough. Keep folding and blending the dough until all parts of the dough-ball have been blended together.

In other words, disturb the dough and blend it together, but do not be rough. You just want to massage the dough and let it know you're the boss, sleep time is over, and it's a new day. The Breadtopia video shows the baker touching the dough with floured hands. The dough is usually pretty sticky. Personally, I don't like to touch it. I do all my mixing and disturbing the dough's rest with scrapers. I never touch the dough with bare hands. Not that I'm obsessive. I find touching the dough unnecessary.

The idea for this scraping method derives from my bread machine experience. The machine I used when I used a bread machine applied the same mixing action during the 'punching down' step that it applied in the initial mixing step. Mixing is mixing. I don't mix the dough as vigorously during my 'punching down' step as during my initial mixing, but in principle the bread machine taught me there doesn't necessarily have to be a difference.

Take the lid off your Dutch oven. After 2, 3, or 4 minutes of massaging the dough as described above, slip the dough ball into the Dutch oven. I use a cast iron Dutch oven. I wipe a pastry brush or cloth or paper towel with a teeny bit of olive oil or grape seed oil all around the Dutch oven before I put in the dough. I am absolutely sure baking purists are shocked by my suggestion of coating the Dutch oven with a thin film of oil. I have my reasons, so if someone wants to question this step, please add your comment.

I've never tried an enamel-coated Dutch oven, but it doesn't seem as if a small, thin coat of oil would hurt things.

OK, the dough is now in the base of the Dutch oven. It's up to you if you want to spread the dough around and reshape it. I don't. It will spread itself around on its own. In any case, cover the Dutch oven with a linen, nonfluffy towel. Let it sit 1 1/2 hours plus or minus bonus minutes you add or subtract after you experiment.

After it has fermented for 1 1/2 hours, cover the Dutch oven with its heavy lid.

The Breadtopia video says you should heat your oven for maybe a half hour before you put in the Dutch oven. The cheapskate in me has never allowed me to do that. When the time is up (18 hours plus 1 1/2 hour) I put the (room temperature) covered Dutch oven in the oven and turn on the heat for the first time.

For my black cast iron Dutch oven I use 450 degrees. The video suggests 500 degrees for a light- or white-colored enamel-surface Dutch oven.

The Breadtopia video says heat for 30 minutes for the first part of the baking. I did this the first few times. No longer. I now heat the Dutch oven with the lid closed at 450 degrees for 15 minutes. Maybe your oven is different or your Dutch oven is different or something else is different. Maybe you want a different combination of times and temperatures. That's up to you.

At the end of 15 minutes (or maybe you will use a different time) open the oven and take off the lid of the Dutch oven. Things will be HOT HOT HOT. BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL. Not only should you cover your fingers, also cover your wrist because heat comes out quickly from the Dutch oven when you take the lid off. It's not an explosion of heat, but you don't want to burn yourself.

Turn the oven down 50 degrees. Bake for maybe 15 minutes more (depends entirely on the color of the top that you like).

It's done.

Take the bread out of the oven and the Dutch oven. Cool it on a rack.

Enjoy.

This recipe is about as basic as I can make it. I do not do fancy tops. I do not do twisty bread. By your third or fourth bread you will go back to the internet and find more recipes to your liking and you will start to do fancier things. As I wrote elsewhere on this blog, this recipe is extremely forgiving, so even an amateur like me can make some pretty fancy and tasty stuff. Go for it.