Easiest Yet No Knead Italian Bread

I have so many friends who tell me they are afraid of trying to make bread because they're afraid of yeast, and I say, "I hear you."  It is intimidating and it does take some skill and experience but it's not impossible.  I don't think there's many of us whose first attempts weren't less than stellar.  My first attempt at white bread resulted in a beautiful golden mass that needed a chain saw to cut through it.  Well, that's an exaggeration, maybe a hacksaw.  No kidding.  My husband took it down to the trash bin below and I heard the resounding clank all the way up to our second-story apartment, windows and doors closed, over city traffic.  Yep, that was me.  I can still remember the ringing.  It was a good laugh but not good bread.  It was also good experience and I tried again.  And again.  And then I got it. That's what I'm doing with tortilla making, and that's not even a yeasted bread!

This bread is virtually goof proof.  I can't think of a way you can mess it up, unless you don't let it rise long enough or the water you use in the batter is too hot and you kill the yeast or you overhandle it when you put it on the pan for baking and you lose some of the holey-ness.  There's no worry about kneading it to a smooth ball, too much water, not enough water, too little flour, too much flour, folding and rolling.  Just mix and plop mostly.

I've made this so many times over the years I've memorized the simple recipe, but simple doesn't equate with flavorless.  Oh. My. Word.  The long slow rise develops the yeasty flavor, combined with a beautiful golden crust on the outside, tender on the inside and you're in bread heaven.  If you're a rustic, holey bread person, this will warm your heart and satisfy your belly.

I've toasted it, made sandwiches with it, eaten it slathered with thick pats of butter.  It's good alongside soup, salad, or anywhere a good artisan type bread rounds out a meal.  Bread here lasts maybe three days. I've shared loaves with a friend who freezes half a loaf and he says it thaws well and is just as good as fresh.  So, that's good to know.  Here, we tend to eat it almost as fast as I make it, grins.

NO KNEAD ITALIAN BREAD

4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon yeast
2 cups of warm water 

Oven-proof baking dish or casserole dish with 2-3 cups of hot water to be used while baking bread 

Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl and add the 2 cups of warm water (about 105-115 degrees Fahrenheit). Stir the mixture.  You will have a gloopy, sticky mass.  It's okay; that's perfect!

Cover the bowl with a cloth or plastic wrap (not allowing it to touch the dough because the dough is going to rise).  Let sit in warm place about 4 hours, until double in volume.  The surface will have bubbles about 1/4 inch in diameter. 

Somewhere in this time frame, preheat your oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit.  Put the casserole dish with the 2-3 cups of hot water on a bottom rack and allow to heat with the oven.  You're trying to create a steamy, moist environment for the bread to bake.

Dump your dough onto a well-floured surface, covering the outside of the dough with flour as it is still gloopy and sticky.  Handle the dough as little as possible as you're trying not to burst the bubbles, and shape into desired shape.  A little stretching and pulling and patting into a log shape and you're good.  A pastry cloth is handy for rolling the dough onto your baking sheet.  If you've floured the outside of the dough well, you can just roll the dough off the pastry cloth onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.  If you don't use parchment, grease the baking sheet well.

Once the dough is on the baking sheet, put it into oven rack that is set at the mid-point.  (Be careful of the steam as you open the oven door.  It's going to come rushing out at your face.)

Bake for 35-45 minutes, or until the crust is a deep golden brown and bread sounds hollow when thumped with the back of your forefinger knuckle.

COOK'S NOTES:  I've made this enough times to where I can skip the step about putting it onto a well-floured surface and shaping.  I now just generously sprinkle the dough with flour, scraping down the side of the bowl to flour the sides, line a jelly roll pan with parchment paper, flour that well, and scrape my dough out into the pan and shape it there. It does get sticky and can be a little tricky because it wants to stick to the parchment, but nowadays I'm about not having one more thing to clean.

Now the directions say to let rise in a warm place for 4 hours and let me add a thought to that. I live in Arizona and most times of the year we are cooling our house to 75 degrees Fahrenheit.  Every place is a warm place in my kitchen.  Four hours of rising time is too long here so I start checking it after 3 hours or so, and more often than not, the dough just needs another half hour or so, during which time I preheat the oven.  When I lived in New Hampshire where in the dead of winter we heated our house to just 70, well, that was a whole 'nother story.  I put a bowl of warm water in an oven that had been ever so briefly heated to the lowest possible oven temperature and turned off.  Leave the oven door open, put the hot water on the lowest rack, turn on the oven light, and put the covered dough on a rack above that.  Sometimes I had to change the hot water a couple of times to make sure that the air was still warm.  Drafty old New England farmhouses, grins.

If you're going to let your dough rise in the oven, remove it before preheating it to 500.

Oh, one last thought.  That water that you use as you bake the bread is going to be hot, hot, hot.  I let it sit there after I take the bread out and allow it to cool down before handling.  One splash and you're going to get burnt, uh, speaking from experience.