Crusty, Rustic, No Knead Bread

By draingal

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp yeast
• 1 1/2 cups warm water (not hot, think room temperature)

Details

Servings 1
Preparation time 5mins
Cooking time 1130mins
Adapted from kitchentrials.com

Preparation

Step 1

This bakes in a Dutch oven.

Whisk it up.

Add the water (use room temperature water, you’re aiming for warm, but not hot).

Mix it up with a wooden spoon or spatula. It will look like a sticky ball.

Cover it tightly with plastic wrap and let it rise. Let it rise for 12 to 18 hours. Or put this in the oven, with the oven light on. It works perfectly and rises in about 6 hours. Then just take it out and let it finish on the counter until you’re ready to bake it.

Throw a bunch of flour down on your counter, put the dough on it, then put more flour on top of the dough.

Quickly shape it into a ball. This takes 1 minute. That’s it. At this stage, if you wanted too, you could mix some stuff in. Looking for ideas: rosemary, grated cheese (I’d go with an old cheddar), some roasted garlic, a combination of them, or anything else you can think of.

Cover loosely with plastic wrap and leave for 30 minutes. While this is resting put your Dutch oven, lid and all, into the pre-heated oven for the 30 minutes.

Put the ball of dough into the pre-heated Dutch oven, put the lid on it, and put it in the oven. I sprinkled some sea salt on top first. I suggest you do the same. 
After 30 minutes take off the lid. Continue cooking for 15 more minutes. There are two ways to gage if the inside is done: first, when you knock on the loaf it should sound hollow. While a nice fact, I don’t trust myself to accurately gage “hollow”. I stick an instant read thermometer into the side of the loaf, if it registers 190ºF – 200ºF we’re good to go.