but a lot by it.

*


I tried making this no-knead bread last night that I linked to a couple of days ago. It came out beautifully, to my surprise. It's challenging not in the technique, but in the timing. The bread has to rise the recommended 18 hours, plus another 15 minutes resting, plus another 2 hours rising, plus 30 minutes cooking with the casserole top on, then another 15 minutes cooking with the casserole top off. It's hard to plan it so that the 18 hours ends up at a convenient time to do these things. Between 6 & 8 pm sounds perfect, right? But this means you have to start it between noon and 2 the previous day--which is not a time when most people are home. If you started it at 8 in the morning, it would be prime around 2pm the next day, when, again, is not a time when most people are home. So it's a weekend bread. Unfortunately, I am both stubborn and forgetful. The weekend was running out, and I was afraid that I wouldn't get the bread made. So I started it Sunday at around 4pm, which meant that it should have been done with its first rise around 10pm yesterday. I was going to start the second rising before I left to go out to see Joanna Newsom harp her stuff with emininent lawschoolers RCS, DMB, M?T and DMB's nonlawschooler friend Graham (terrific show, by the way), but I forgot. So I started the second rise when I got home around 1:30 am. This meant waking up at 3am to preheat the stove; 3:30am to put in the bread; 4:00am to take the lid off the casserole dish it was cooking in to give it a good crust (has to do with humidity); and 4:15am to take it out altogether. And then somehow I didn't go to tax class in the morning. Also, if you're doing it for the first time, it can be a little hard to sleep with the oven on at 450 degrees about six feet (including a wall) from your face. There were many worries to worry: what if I sleep through the timer and I wake up inthe morning and the bread is a black lump? what if the bread doesn't rise and I am left with a black lump? what if that blue casserole thing isn't pyrex or glass after all (I forgot to check) and it breaks or starts on fire? What if the bread starts on fire? what if my apartment starts on fire?

I was also surprised that it went well because the bread didn't seem to rise at all (to my blearied 3:30am eyes) during the second rising. And it was still VERY sticky. It's supposed to do its second rising between two floured dish towels--lots of it came off with the bottom dishtowel. But just see!



and it tastes good too. And it was amazingly easy**, despite my own 4am second rising.
. . .

* Alan has had one of these Not By Bread Alone tin ads on his wall for many long years. I was pretty happy to find a picture of it online (I heart google image search).

**One piece of advice, though--if you wash dishes in the sink by hand, and you have a tiny little grate in there to keep big stuff from washing down the drain--take that grate out before you wash stuff with lots of little bits of bread dough on it. The dough's sticky, will clog up the grate, and be hard to come out.