Almost No-Knead Bread

This is a bit of old news, but I’ve so far made two ultra basic loaves of bread! By ultra basic I mean “flour, salt, yeast, and water” is the entire ingredient list and it is labeled as an “almost no-knead” bread. This is an adapted version of the original Cook’s Illustrated “Almost No-Knead” found at Breadtopia. It’s really simple to make even for those of us living in a tiny dorm room. I’ve been adding white whole-wheat flour and it’s really good!

Just a few notes about this recipe though. Even introduction of flour is important and the dough will seem dry after stirring together the ingredients. It gets REALLY wet after the LONG 18 hour rise. The kneading of this dough is extremely simple and can be done just on a cookie sheet on the floor. I know this from my adventures in dorm baking. Words of caution – use a real bread knife to cut this, it gets messy otherwise. That may seem straight forward, but this is not a bread you can pinch apart to enjoy. I think it tastes better with some jelly or other topping but there were plenty of people at the newspaper office who seemed just fine eating it plain!

Next stop… Monkey Bread