I don’t really need a whole lot else in life. A cup of tea, perhaps, and some excellent chocolate. But really, bread is central. As long as there’s good bread in the house, I feel like things will most likely be okay. It’s like a security blanket–warm and comforting and familiar.
This particular bread is a small miracle. It’s so easy a monkey could do it. The recipe is from Jim Lahey’s mouth-watering My Bread. Lahey owns Sullivan St. Bakery in New York, one of the spots Delaney and I fell in love with when we were in the city last August. The man is a yeast genius.
His technique is fairly unusual; I won’t get into a compare-and-contrast essay here, since I’m assuming not all of my fair readers make as much bread as I do, but Lahey’s genius is this: there’s no kneading. Dump some ingredients in a bowl, let it sit all night, and the next day, bake it. It’s that simple. The only tools you need are a bowl, a spoon, a tea towel, and a dutch oven (which is a big heavy pot, like this, or this one, if you’re feeling flush)
The recipe started making the rounds of the food blogosphere when the New York Times printed an article about Lahey’s bread. I’m not going to re-type the instructions here, because his version is perfect. However–I watched (figuratively speaking–he called me up and we talked it through) my brother bake a loaf based on the newspaper instructions, while I was using the book instructions, so I have a couple of tips, if you don’t happen to have the book handy.
First of all, weigh your ingredients. Let me repeat that: WEIGH YOUR INGREDIENTS! You want:
400 grams of bread flour
300 grams of water
(plus the salt and yeast)
I prefer not to take the lid off at all–the one time I did, I wound up with what I not-so-fondly called “cajun-style bread,” and tossed the whole loaf in the garbage. That was painful.
Finally, don’t touch that preheated pot with your hands. It’s easy to forget how hot it is.
Really, don’t you need to go make a loaf of bread right now?
