A Bread Recipe for Those Who Don’t Know How To Boil Water
Only 4 ingredients are needed for this simple No Knead Bread recipe, which bakes up fluffy on the inside with a golden and bubbled crust.
Okay, so obviously you know how to boil water. But the point is, this recipe is absurdly easy. I know a woman whose 4 year old son made it. Yeah. So you can DEFINITELY make it too. There’s no starter or sponge, no kneading to the windowpane stage, none of that stuff. Just mix some flour, yeast, salt, and water before you go to bed, then in the morning form the dough into a ball, wrap it in a towel for 2 hours, then plop it in a pan and bake it. Pretty awesome. Make it for your friends and family, and impress them =)
Before you go to bed, mix together the dough. It will look like a shaggy mess:
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit overnight on the countertop (and for up to 20 hours). When you wake up, the dough should look like this:
Bubbles on the surface, and very sticky and wet. Lay out a kitchen towel, then get your hands nice and wet (and re-wet as needed, to keep the dough from sticking to you). Pick up the dough mass, and form it (more or less) into a ball. Place it onto the towel:
Wrap it up, and let it rise for 2 hours.
After one more rise, it’s ready to bake! The key is to bake it in a pot, which traps in the moisture and give it a great crust.
No Knead Bread
Ingredients
- 3 cups bread flour
- 1/4 tsp quick rise yeast
- 1.5 tsp sea salt
- 1.5 cups warm water
- cornmeal to sprinkle on the bottom of the pan
Instructions
- Before you go to bed, mix all the ingredients in a big bowl until combined. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit overnight on the countertop (and for up to 20 hours).
- Lay out a kitchen towel, then get your hands nice and wet (and re-wet as needed, to keep the dough from sticking to you). Pick up the dough mass, and form it (more or less) into a ball. Place it onto the towel, wrap it up, and let it rise for 2 hours.
- Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F, and stick a dutch oven into the oven so it gets very hot. Once the oven is preheated, take the pot out and sprinkle cornmeal in the bottom so the bread doesn’t stick. Lift the towel up and dump your dough ball into the pot, and give it a shake so it sits flat on the bottom of the pan. Put the lid on, and bake the bread for 30 minutes. Then take the lid off, and bake for another 15 minutes, until the bread is golden brown. Take the bread out of the pot and cool on a wire rack.
Nutrition
Nutrition is estimated using a food database and is only intended to be used as a guideline for informational purposes.
54 Comments on “A Bread Recipe for Those Who Don’t Know How To Boil Water”
I’ve tried this bread twice, and it is delicious! Crusty, the way I love bread! My question, though, is shouldn’t I moisten the towel before wrapping the dough? Both times the dough stuck badly to the towel, and I used a good quality lint-free cotton tea towel. Also, my dough blob kind of lays out in an oval. I let the bread rest in a 70 degree, draft-free room after mixing and while in the towel, and I know the yeast was active, because both breads had lots of air holes inside. Thanks!
Hi Elaine, the towel situation is tough, I have some that stick miserably and some that don’t stick at all. Moistening the towel is a very smart idea. I will try that with my “sticky towels” as an experiment and see if that fixes those sticky towels. Regarding the oval blob, it sounds like the “gluten web” holding the dough isn’t very developed/strong. If you kneaded it a bit that would make it a tighter loaf, but then it’s not no knead anymore lol.
Thank you, Joanne! I’ll try moistening the towel, and also knead the dough a bit [ 🙂 ]. I will not have to wait long to do so — as soon as the loaf was out of the oven, my husband began clamoring for me to make another loaf. I think I am going to have to teach him how to make this bread!!
Hi,
The bread looks good and simple. The problem is I don’t have all that I need to make it
and have a very limited budget right now.
I do have active dry yeast. Can I use that instead? Do I have to proof it first?
I don’t have a large all metal pot to bake with.
Will it work if I back it in a glass dish and make a tin foil dome?
Will the recipe work with regular flour, instead of bread flour?
Thanks!
Hi Kimberly, active dry will work fine, just sub it in. No need to proof it. The glass dish with the tin foil dome might work, but the heat retention won’t be the same as a pot with thick walls, but it would trap in the steam which is good. The only thing that won’t work is the regular flour. You need the bread flour for its high protein and high gluten development.
Hi Joanne,
This looks so great and easy! I saw a post from a few years ago and wanted to ask your input on making this into a whole wheat/grain recipe? Is it as simple as adding whole wheat flour like the previous comment? Thank you!
Hi Michelle, so the problem with subbing whole wheat is it has significantly less protein in it, which means less gluten development, which means a much denser dough. Red Star Yeast has a product called Platinum that has dough strengtheners in it that I sometimes use for whole wheat type breads. I’ve never tried this as full whole wheat but I’ve done half whole wheat half white flour and it has gone decently well.
What kind of bread flour do you use ? ( My talent lies just beyond boiling water ! )
Hi Libby! haha, I’m sure your cooking abilities are better than you think =) I use gold medal but you can use any brand as long as it specifically says “bread flour.” Good luck and let me know how it goes!
This is a great recipe… I’ve used Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread recipe a ton now and the results are amazingly tasty…. I did a similar post on it as well.</a Have you tried his No-Knead Pizza Dough recipe? It's pretty awesome as well!
This looks absolutely amazing! Unfortunately, I don’t own a Dutch oven….anything else to do? (Do you think a dish of water in the oven would help?)
Hailey, do you have just a big metal pot, like for boiling pasta? Anything with a lid on it to trap the steam will do the trick. A water dish in the oven won’t produce the same results 🙁
Update: I ended up using the ceramic insert from my slowcooker with heavy duty aluminum foil as the lid. Worked great! Delicious bread! So good, in fact, that my husband got me a Dutch oven fir Christmas!
Awesome! Thanks for the update Hailey, and for sharing your method with all of us.
Just came across your blog and can’t wait to try some of your recipes! I had a question tho…is it ok if I pin ur bread recipe to Pinterest? I noticed you don’t have a “pin button” on this recipe. Thanks!!
Hi Michelle, yes that’s fine, I just didn’t used to post the pinterest button this far back. Thanks for asking!
haha that makes sense 🙂 Thanks! Can’t wait to try baking this! 🙂
Oh oh…I started making this and just discovered I have no cornmeal left…is there anything else I can use to sprinkle on the bottom of the pot??I don’t have any poppyseed either…that would probably work…
Uh oh…I just got home and saw this. What did you end up doing? You could also just stick a piece of parchment paper down in there, as long as the parchment is rated high enough for the temperature of the oven. I don’t just because the parchment I have doesn’t go that high.
Hi, turned out fine, my neighbour had a little bit of cornmeal luckily…I would have liked more but it was enough to make it not stick. The bread turned out great thoogh..We had it with fresh home made veg soup! Thanks so much!!!
I’m a little late to the party but had to add my two cents. I’ve been making this in an enameled cast iron dutch oven for a couple of years. It makes the most awesome hard crust. I’ve never added anything (cornmeal, grease, etc.) to keep the bread from sticking to the pot. It must be the preheating and high temperature that makes it so. I don’t do the two hour rise, just leave it on the counter under plastic wrap for the half hour that the oven/pot are preheating. And I have made rolls, but it takes longer because you can only do a few at a time, but at least there is only the one preheat.
Wonderful info Bertrice, thanks for sharing some of your insight!
this is almost identical to the le creuset recipe, which is YUMMY!
any idea if you can change it up and make rolls or baguette? change time?
thanks!!
Hi Terry, Hm, well the problem is you really need to bake it in the dutch oven or pot, that’s what makes it so crusty. You could try baking the rolls in the pot if you have a really big one!
Oh my goodness. I just realized you replied.
I Di have a couple pretty big oval la creuset. (My friend has the 13qt-I could borrow-and get if need be. Haha) but how long do you think to bake the rolls?
Would love to have a printable version of this.
Just found your site and like it so much.
Hi Margie, I just put in a printable version for you. It’s some great bread and ridiculously easy, I hope you enjoy it!!!
Thank you so much.
Can’t wait to try it.
Hi – I followed Elise’s tweet to find you, and I’m so pleased I did! I realise I’m late to this post, but it sounds fantastic so I’m going to give it a try (as well as Joanne’s Original Bread). Do you have a photograph of the bread insides so I can see what kind of crumb it has?
Love the blog, thank you!
Nicola in England
Well, the cold of winter gave me a very dense bread! But VERY yummy 🙂
Hi Joanne! I gave this recipe to my mom and she made it for dinner tonight, but she used whole wheat flower — it turned out wonderfully! Fantastic recipe! Merry Christmas, and I hope to catch up with you soon!
This was so easy to make! I made mine in a dutch oven and it came out really crusty, perfect for dipping in soup or pasta sauce. I love that it takes just a few minutes to prep which is great since that is about how much time pots and pans keep my 8 month old occupied. I was scared of bread baking before I tried this. It is great to know that I can make fresh bread for my family with little time or effort.
Luv the idea of this bread! The best part is making it up the night before. What could be better than a fresh crusty loaf that you make yourself??? Delicious!
This looks perfect !!! Bravissima!!! It reminds the Sunday bread we buy fresh every week!!! I will write your recipe!!