The bread that finally worked
I have made bad bread for years. Dense loaves, pale loaves, one memorable loaf that stuck to the tin so firmly that tin and bread went into the bin together. This spring I gave up on being clever and went back to the plainest no-knead recipe I could find.
For the record, here is what I do now:
500 g of ordinary bread flour, 375 g of water at room temperature, 10 g of salt and a quarter teaspoon of dried yeast. Mix it with a spoon until there is no dry flour left, cover the bowl with a plate and leave it on the counter overnight, somewhere between twelve and eighteen hours. It should be bubbly and loose by morning.
Tip it onto a floured board, fold the edges into the middle a few times, turn it over and let it sit for an hour while the oven heats to 240 °C with a heavy lidded pot inside. Then drop the dough into the hot pot, lid on for 30 minutes, lid off for another 15 to 20 until the crust is properly dark.
The mistakes I was making before were all about impatience. I did not let the dough rise long enough. I did not preheat the pot. And I pulled the loaf out when it looked golden instead of waiting until it looked almost too dark, which is when the crust actually gets crisp.
The other thing I learned is to leave it alone after baking. Cutting into hot bread feels like the reward, but the inside is still cooking from the heat in the crust, and slicing it too early gives you a gummy middle. An hour on a rack makes a real difference.
It is not a fancy loaf. The crumb is a bit irregular and the shape depends on how tired I was when I folded it. But it is reliably good, it costs almost nothing, and the kitchen smells wonderful on Sunday mornings. I have made it every week since March and have not thrown one away yet.