Over the summer I have been working on a recipe for a true no knead bread. I wanted a more dense moist bread than the Lahey/Bittman bread and I didn't want to wait hours on end for a second rise. I also wanted a larger loaf for my 8 quart oval Le Creuset.
As much as I like the Lahey bread I wanted more for less. Call me a greedy if you like!
I wanted an easy bread to serve with the basil and maters coming out of my garden and for dipping in the dresssing of a caprese salad.

I start with;

3 Cups King Arthur bread flour
2 Cups King Arthur AP flour
2 1/4 ounce packages of quick rise yeast
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar

Combine all dry ingredients and hand mix.
Then add;

1/4 cup EVOO
3 1/4 cups warm water.
Hand mix.
Cover container with lid or plastic wrap and place in fridge for 24 hours.
Dough will double in size.
The first photo is of the dough straight out of the fridge and the second a close up of the dough surface.

After the dough is pulled from the fridge lightly flour a work surface. Tip your bowl on it's side and gently pull the dough from the bowl on to your work area. The dough will be a bit stringy and sticky.

A close up of the dough in the bowl. As I pull the dough from the bowl I do not knead it at all. The shape I form is for an 8 quart Le Creuset oval Dutch oven.

Here is the dough ready to go into the pot. At this time I have had my Le Creuset pot in the oven at 450 degrees for a minimum of 30 minutes. From here I simply pull my pot from the oven, lift each end of the dough and plop it inside the Le Creuset. In this example I am spritzing the loaf with water as soon as it goes in to the pot. I have not had any issues spritzing water into a 450 degree LC pot or with the dough being cold. I do get some discoloration inside the Le Creuset but it comes clean with a little bar keepers friend when it's time to clean up. If you want a more rustic looking bread you can skip the water and dust the bread with flour.

Bake at 450 degrees for 50 minutes covered and bake an additional 10-15 minutes un-covered. At this point pull the pot and remove the lid. I look for an internal temperature of 190 degrees. If you are still a few degrees shy just put the lid back on and leave the bread in the pot for an additional five minutes. If you are at the correct temperature pull the loaf and put on a cooling rack
The finished product.

It goes well with a smoked berkshire pork shoulder.

Here is another variation I have been working on with some whole wheat flour. In this recipe I do not refrigerate the dough. This does seem to develop slightly more flavor. I also have a lot more counter space than fridge space! While no second rise is required if you do decide to allow your dough to set for a second rise or of you find it difficult to pick up the sticky dough up from the counter another option is putting the dough directly on lightly floured parchment paper. Leave the parchment under the dough as you bake the bread. This makes transferring the bread from the counter to the pot far easier with out deflating your loaf.

3 Cups KA white Whole wheat flour
2 Cups KA bread flour
3 1/4 ounce packages of quick or rapid rise yeast
1 teaspoon sea salt

Combine all dry ingredients and hand mix.
Then add;

1/4 cup EVOO
3 1/4 cups warm water.
Hand mix.
Cover container plastic wrap and leave on counter for 18-24 hours.
Dough will double in size.

As soon as I place the bread on the parchment and set it in the Le Creuset I mist the bread with water. I then follow the same procedure as above baking covered for 50 minutes and uncoverd an additional ten.
There is a little trick to using the parchment. If there is excess parcment on the ends you used as a handle when lifting the dough from the counter in to your cast iron pot do NOT stuff it in your baking vessel! This can prevent the bread from rising or cause a deformed loaf (gotta hate it when that happens). Just leave it outside the lid. This works far better than cutting the parchment short and trying to stuff the excess in the pot with the dough. If you do that it can prevent the dough from rising in the pot.

Dang that does look good Stetson! Thanks for the post. I'll ask questions later! Headed out to camp to hunt antelope, deer and elk this weekend.

Stetson, have you cooked any bread on your EGG yet? I wonder how "egged" bread recipies turn out.

Good stuff Stetson. I'm a complete klutz when it comes to bread, something I'd like to remedy.

Yer a son-a'-bitch fer teasing us like this. Damn that looks gud.

Me no need bread. Me have meat.

No I have not. I do have a recipe for Chapa bread from a book called "seven Fires" by Francis Mallmann. I have had that on my short list to try on the BGE. The season just flew by this year. Poof, summers gone.
It's a great book for any one interested in wood cooking. One of the more unique books that I have found.
I hope to get to give it a try in the near future.

Give this a try or google the Bittman Lahay bread. The NY times ran their recipe and it is very good. That and the recipes I have posted here are about as easy as it gets. Any lidded cast iron pot works fine. Once you try this you won't be buying bread any more.

I hope yer not eatin any of that stick jerky! LOL
BTW I got a catalog in the mail the other day from a company that has a ton of sausage makin goodies.

http://www.lemproducts.com

Nope just some whitetail jerky! Everyone liked it and nobody died! Thanks for the link, I will check it out. Might make some antelope jerky as soon as my antelope-cicle thaws out. Killed it Saturday, hung it up to cool out and it was 17 degrees the next morning...brrrrrr. Glad I didn't kill that bull elk late Saturday night. A whole frozen antelope is one thing...a whole frozen elk is hard to deal with.

I hope you can eat your 'lopecicle! Shot a deer in Manitoba years ago, and it quickly froze because it was real cold. I forget the temperature, but I do recall that it was so cold that I had to keep backing up when I took a pizz...

Anyway, I later found out about meat and cold-shortening.
The mechanism is that the meat cools so fast that glycogen is still present in the muscle (rather than being converted to lactic acid as it would with even a bit of normal-rate cooling). The muscle fibres contract using the glycogen as an energy source, and stay contracted. You can subsequently age this meat until it rots into a pile of goo, but nothing will get those little actin and mysin filaments to relax...

The meat on the deer I mention was like the tread on a truck tire (and this was not an old deer by any means). Even the hamburger was chewy -- and it was ground twice!

I thought about trying to market Odocoileus virginianus chewing gum... but I knew I'd never get a second purchase from anybody.

John
PS: sorry for the biology teacher explanation -- can't help myself!

If nothing else it will make good jerky! No worries!

Talk about making the simple hard? I don't do any messing around, no water just do like on the video, do this twice a week and have yet to have it come out wrong. Works well on the last hundred or so loafs, I must be doing something right.

Where's the fun in that? I'm glad to hear you punched a tag. The place I linked had some pretty slick set ups for ground jerky. I would think you might also want to consider canning meat that could be tough. Put some of that canned venison on a thick slice of home made bread and bust out some of Sams mango Madness.
Buuuuuuurp.

I think ya lost me there. My recipe requires no second rise like the bittman/Lahey method. It takes a lot less time. The crust and texture is very different.
Here's a link to the Bittman/Lahey recipe that may be of interest. The video is a bit miss-leading in places if you are talking about the one that I posted here in the past. The written directions are a good bit easier to follow. They do use water in their method. Hope this helps.
The article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/08mini.html?_r=1


The recipe:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html?ref=dining

LOL Thanks for the compliment! That Berkshire pork shoulder was mighty tasty. Some of the best BBQ I have made. The fat tasted like smoked bacon.

Only one time to rise, no water except for what the recipe calls for. It does take 12 hours to rise.

What's the recipe that you are following?