No Knead Bread

Perhaps you watched our Basic Bread Making video where we showed how we make bread the conventional way which calls for kneading the dough by hand for several minutes.

Here we will show you an easier way of making bread with no kneading that looks and tastes just as good, but with hardly any work.

You will need just 4 ingredients:

3 cups lukewarm water
1 tablespoon yeast
1 tablespoon salt
6 cups flour

In a 5 or 6 quart covered container, mix 3 cups of warm water with 1 tablespoon of yeast. Stir until dissolved. You could add the salt in with the yeast, but I prefer to mix 1 tablespoon of salt into 6 cups of flour. Dump the flour into the water and yeast all at once. Then mix until the flour is incorporated. Scrape the spoon and cover the dough but pop one corner so air can escape. Set the container on your counter for 2 hours and the dough will rise almost to the top of the container.

Then place the container of dough into the refrigerator to chill for at least one hour. The dough is easier to handle when cold. You could keep the dough in the refrigerator for up to a week until you are ready to make the bread.

An hour or so before you want to bake the bread, take it out of the refrigerator and dump it onto a floured counter. Sprinkle a little flour on top so it doesn't stick to your hands and form it into two large or three smaller loaves. Or you could bake one loaf at a time and save the rest for another day. Place the loaves into a parchment lined bread pan, or you could make the loaves round and use a pizza stone or other baking utensil.

Cover the loaves and let them rise for an hour or so. They won't rise too much.

When you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 450, cut some slashes in the dough and brush the top with cold water. Because we don't want the crust too crispy, we cover it, uncovering for the last 15 minutes so the bread will brown, but you can bake it uncovered for 35-40 minutes.

We always make 2 loaves, but we cut most of it into sli..