Spaceman Spiff from the BGE Forum replied to my bread machine inquiry a few days ago by pointing me towards this "no knead" bread recipe, which first appeared in the NY Times in November of 2006, courtesy of Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery.
I decided to give it a try. I found a good website with some detailed instructions - here is the link. What follows is the picturementary of my own experience, for those who are interested. Oh, yeah, I baked it in the oven this time, simply because we were out of lump at my parents' house, but now that I've seen the results I'll probably try it on the Egg next time.
I took 3 cups of all purpose flour, 2 teaspoons of salt, 1/4 teaspoon of instant "quick-rise" yeast, and 1.5 cups of lukewarm water. Mixed together in a large bowl until the flour was all wetted. This took about 5 minutes total. Here is what it looked like:
Now, I covered this and let it rest and rise in the microwave for 10 hours. This is what it looked like after 10 hours:
At this point, I stirred it down (took 1 minute) and then let it rise for another 14 hours, after which it looked like this:
At this point, I stirred it down again, then I dumped it out onto a piece of parchment paper, folded up the four sides and flipped it over (took about 3 minutes). This is what it looked like:
I pulled the edges of the parchment paper and made a tent over the dough and let it rest for 2 more hours, after which it looked like this:
At this point I took the baking vessel, my dad's Lodge porcelain-coated cast iron dutch oven with lid, and put it in the oven on the middle rack, and started preheating the oven to 475 degrees. This is what the dutch oven looks like (I think it's a 5 quart oven???):
After the oven had preheated, I removed the top of the dutch oven, dumped the dough in, put the cover back on, and set the timer for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, I removed the lid from the dutch oven, then let the bread bake for 20 more minutes. Then I removed the dutch oven, pulled the loaf out and set it out to cool, and as it did so you could hear the cracking and popping indicative of a nice crust:
The bread was excellent, just like you want a crusty bread: nice hard crust, chewy, bubbly interior. Went perfectly with my dad's marina, and all this with only about 15 minutes of actual work. Will definitely be doing this again, next time on the Egg. A couple more pics:
My second no-knead bread attempt with even better results . . .
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