When I heard about the New York Times “No Knead Bread” recipe, I said to myself, “I wanna try that.” Now, three months after seeing the recipe, I finally had the excuse to make my very first ever loaf of bread.

Pic 1: The dough after bringing all the ingredients together. This was started around 6 pm Friday. I covered it and put it in the oven (which was turned off) to sit overnight.

I pulled the dough out of the oven when I woke up in the morning. It didn’t look like it had risen much in the 14 hours since starting. Our house is between 60* – 64* at night so that might have had something to do with it. I left it out on the kitchen table all the morning.

When I returned around 2 pm, it had risen, but again not by much. I folded the dough. Then Annie suggested heating a cup of water in the microwave for a couple of minutes, then putting the bowl of dough in there to rise. She was right (of course).

Pic 2: Here’s the dough at 4 pm right before going into the dutch oven.

Pic 3: Cooling on a wire rack.

Pic 4: After 1 hour of cooling, I cut into the loaf at 6 pm, exactly 24 hours after starting. *whew*! that was a lot of hard work!

Seriously though, I thought that the crust on this loaf was fantastically crunchy but the crumb itself was a bit chewier than I like. I suppose it has something to do with it not rising very much before the folding step.

Next time, (and there will be a next time) I wanna try adding different flavors (herbs, cheese, olives, etc.) to the bread.

Aloha, Nate