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No bread machine or stand mixer needed for this chewy No-Knead Crusty Bread. All you need is flour, yeast, salt, water, a cast iron dutch oven, and time.
This is my favorite bread to serve with a spinach artichoke dip or green goddess dip.
This is the easiest bread recipe.
Most homemade bread recipes require at least a little technique and experience to get it right. Not this one.
Making this crusty loaf of bread is not only easy, but its fun! But this recipe… you don’t even have to knead it! Say what? Yeast bread that doesn’t have to squeezed and pushed and pulled to activate the gluten? That’s right.
How is it made?
All this bread needs is time. All you knead (get my pun?) to do is combine the ingredients, cover them, and give them at least an overnight rest.
My house is also quite freezing so I warmed my oven up just a wee bit, then turned it off, to give my dough a not-so-frigid place to rise and rest.
The other trick is in the baking process. You must have a cast iron dutch oven and you must get that vessel screaming hot before you add the dough.
Making this bread is like conducting a fantastic-smelling chemistry experiment in your own kitchen. With every step, its hard to believe how perfect it will turn out, but it does.
This bread tastes fantastic sliced warm with a pat of butter. It also makes a great bread bowl for a homemade soup as well as a vessel to hold a creamy dip.
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Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups water heated to 110 degrees F
- 1/2 teaspoon active yeast
- 3 cups unbleached all purpose flour
- 1 3/4 teaspoons salt
Instructions
- Add warm water to a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle yeast over the top and allow to sit for 5-10 minutes. Add the flour and salt and stir everything together. Mix until a shaggy mixture forms.
- Tightly cover bowl with plastic wrap and allow to rise for 12 – 18 hours.
- When you're ready to bake the bread, preheat your oven to 450 degrees F. When the oven has reached 450 degrees, place a covered cast iron dutch oven in the oven and heat the pot, empty, for 30 minutes. While the dutch oven is heating, pour dough onto a heavily floured surface and shape into a ball. Lightly cover with plastic wrap and allow to set undisturbed while the pot is heating.
- Remove hot pot from the oven and drop in the dough. Cover with the hot lid and return to the oven to bake, covered, for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes remove the lid and bake an additional 15 minutes.
- Remove bread from the dutch oven and place on a cooling rack to cool.
Notes
- Recipe makes one loaf
- recipe adapted from http://www.simplysogood.com/
- My house is pretty cold so I heated up the oven to 200 degrees F and then turned it off and cracked the door to make it slightly warm. I stored the covered dough in there overnight.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
This post was originally published in January 2016 but has been updated for your reading pleasure.
do you have to use unbleached flour?
that’s my preference but it will work with bleached.
I’ve made this before and used parchment paper. When done, the bottom was burnt. Threw the whole thing in the trash.
That didn’t happen for me. I wonder if your rack was too low in the oven?
Can anything be added to this recipe for bread flavor like cheese or garlic? If it can, at what step should it be added in?
Yep! You could add both. I would throw it in just before everything gets mixed.
has anyone done this and adjusted the size? i see you can vary it but the cook time remains the same. any insight?
I think you should be able to tell when it’s done as long as it’s crusty brown on top and the inside registers 210 degrees F
I’m so glad you don’t need any bread machines to make this one. Looks easy and hassle-free. Loving that beautiful crust it has
This is indeed the easiest bread recipe ever. I have been baking these for years, and I bought a cast-iron dutch oven for the sole purpose of baking bread LOL. 🙂
I could seriously live off this bread. I love how easy it is to make!
This is absolutely the only bread I make at home. It is so delicious. It gets eaten right away in my house.
Finally put my cast iron dutch oven to work, this bread turned out so tasty.
What other kind of pan can you use to make this in? I do not have any cast iron pans or a dutch oven pan that can go in the oven.
This recipe sounds yummy!
Hi Debbie, Unfortunately, I really think this will only work with a cast iron dutch oven. It’s the only thing I know of that can take the heat and produce the same effect. It’s well worth the investment!
I have used the crock pot insert and foil over the top and it worked just as well