Adventures in bread making....

This was the first time making the NYTimes No Knead Bread in the new dutch oven. I made the dough and let it sit covered for 18 hours til it was roughly twice the size (and then some, I think).
After forming the loaf and letting it rest covered for another 2 hours on a cornmeal sprinkled tea towel, it was ready to go into the Dutch Oven which had been heated in the oven at 450 degrees.

Careful! I was fearful of dumping the dough into the sizzling hot dutch oven, but all went well and I think the reason is that the cornmeal dusting on the tea towel allowed it to just fall off into the dutch oven. I quickly put the lid on and into the oven it went for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes I cracked the lid on the dutch oven and let it bake for another 15 minutes. I took it out of the oven and inverted the dutch oven over another tea towel which I used to handle the loaf and get it onto a rack where it rested.

(actually, I don't own a rack, so I used the steamer insert to my sauce pan (inverted) and it worked just fine.)

Isn't it beautiful?



After resting for 15 minutes I couldn't wait another minute and cut it in half and took half over to my neighbors across the hall. I'm so lucky that they are willing to be my guinea pigs on all my kitchen adventures.

Then, I came home and tore off a piece. Oh just YUM!