Late to the Party

So I think I just may be one of the last people on the face of the earth to have not made Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread. For those of you who have been hiding out with me in our little corner of the world, here's the nutshell: Mark Bittman (aka The Minimalist) shared Lahey (of the famed Sullivan Street Bakery)'s bread recipe in a New York Times article.

Since the article's initial publication in fall 2006, people have been raving about the crusty goodness of this oh-so simple bread. Because there is so little work involved -- but loads of fermentation time -- the recipe has caught on like wildfire in the foodie/bloggie community. In fact, Googling "no knead bread" today delivers 2o2,000 results. There's even a Flickr site dedicated to the NKB! People have waxed on about every single tweakable variation to the 4-step process: must you use bread flour for all 3 cups of the required flour? what's the optimum rise time? what works best to coat the bread with: wheat bran, flour or cornmeal? [no; 16-18 hours; wheat bran]

For me, the hardest part has been the absence of a cast iron dutch oven. Alas, I have access to a lil' red Le Creuset beauty here and I've got a loaf in the oven RIGHT NOW. I'm so excited...I picked up some seafood chowder on the way home and my timer reads 12 minutes til bread time. So, stay tuned to see how this all turned out...

I mean, it's supposed to be impossible to screw up...right?

Update: here's the (misshapen) finished product!



And, my lil seafood chowder-salad-bread dinner...