I make this bread pretty often. It’s quick, easy and tasty. The hard­est part used to be find­ing the recipe on the Inter­net.

Novem­ber 8, 2006
Recipe: No-Knead Bread

Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sul­li­van Street Bak­ery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dust­ing
¼ tea­spoon instant yeast
1¼ tea­spoons salt
Corn­meal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl com­bine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plas­tic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, prefer­ably about 18, at warm room tem­per­a­ture, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its sur­face is dot­ted with bub­bles. Lightly flour a work sur­face and place dough on it; sprin­kle it with a lit­tle more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plas­tic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from stick­ing to work sur­face or to your fin­gers, gen­tly and quickly shape dough into a ball. Gen­er­ously coat a cot­ton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or corn­meal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or corn­meal. Cover with another cot­ton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than dou­ble in size and will not read­ily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6– to 8-quart heavy cov­ered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, care­fully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly dis­trib­uted; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 min­utes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 min­utes, until loaf is beau­ti­fully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.