The Most Beautiful Bread in the World

Add this bread to that list you have. You know the one. The one titled:

Super Impressive Things that I Bring Over to Other People's Houses that They Think are Really Hard to Make so I look Incredibly Impressive but Actually They're Sinfully Easy, Ha Ha!

If you don't have this list, promptly make one.

This bread is so beautiful I want to spend the rest of my life taking pictures of it and then scrap booking the pictures in a scrap book made from THIS BREAD!!

Easy-Peesy No-knead Bread

This cutey-pie little recipe is floating around the internet these days and it leaves a lot of room for creative experimentation! All it takes to pull off is the foresight to mix the ingredients the night before you actually want to eat it.

The night before, in a large bowl, combine:

3 cups flour (1/2-1 cup of which can be whole wheat or spelt, etc) I have been using 1/2 of dark rye flour these days and it's scrumptious.
1-2 tsps salt (the first time I made this I only used 1 and this second time round I used 2 but it seems a bit overly salty so I'll probably do 1 and a bit the next time)
I also added 1/2 cup sesame seeds because I've still got a butt-load of from when I made bagels. You could also use flax seeds. So this is going to be a seedy bread. Yum Yum Yum

Currently my bread is 2 1/2 cups white flour, 1/2 dark rye and 1/4 flax seeds and I'm addicted.

Yeast It's your choice. Either use 1/4 teaspoon Instant Yeast and just throw it in with the dry ingredients or pre-proof 1/2 teaspoon regular yeast in 1/4 cup warm water with a dollop of honey or maple syrup (that's what I do)

Add
1 1/2 cups warm water and stir with a fork till it's all combined. I ended up adding an extra scant 1/4 cup of water because I added the sesame seeds and had too much dry loose stuff hanging out in the bottom of the bowl. Done. Cover and go bed.

Finish tomorrow.

I had some quick oats in my cupboard and the recipe called for a cornmeal coating to keep it from sticking to the pan. I used the cornmeal on round one of this bread but thought I'd switch it up and it worked so so well!!

To bake the bread you prepped last night turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Make your hands a bit wet so the dough doesn't stick to them. Just pull the edges up and push them gently into the centre to make a kind of belly-button on the top of the bread. It really doesn't need to be kneaded.

Then gently put the whole thing in a clean dish towel sprinkled with flour, cornmeal or oats and tuck it in for another 1-2 hours of rising.

shhhhhhh the breads sleeping!

With me so far? The bread rose over night and all day, so 9pm-4pm. Then I belly-buttoned it and tossed it in oats. One more rise from 4:30pm-6:30pm ish.

At 6pm put an oven-proof pot with a lid in the oven and preheat the pot and oven to 425 degrees (my oven is still a bit hot so I'll probably only go as hi as 400 next time).

Bake it for 20 minutes covered and then 15 minutes uncovered. It should make a hollow sound when you flick it. Plus it's fun to flick!

Then get yourself a generous slice, reheat some of the delicious Borscht you made yesterday and toss three caramelized onion meatballs into the soup. Dinner, my friends, is served.