No Knead Bread

I think it comes down to two- chocolate chip cookies, and Jim Lahey’s No Knead Bread.  These two food items likely represent the most blogged about topics by food bloggers.  Every food blogger has the best chocolate chip cookie recipe ever, and someone- yet again- produced amazing results using Jim Lahey’s bread baking technique.  I am guilty of the former (I’m still working on the cookies).

I’ve made Lahey’s bread exactly three times, and each time I’ve used a different flour combination.  This third time around, using a combination of bread flour and whole wheat flour, produced my best loaf to date.  Lahey’s recipe was made famous by its simplicity.  Despite its simplicity, there are few things as gratifying as baking a really phenomenal loaf of bread.  Cleaning out your closet is neck and neck (that also went down in our apartment this weekend).  The smell of freshly baked bread emanating from this beautiful boule sitting in our kitchen, and four shopping bags stuffed full of items leaving our apartment just equates to sheer bliss.  Sheer bliss, I tell you.For instructions on making this bread, see the original NY Times article.  Instead of using 3 cups all purpose flour, I used 2 cups bread flour and 1 cup whole wheat flour.  I’ve made it before using only all purpose flour and produced beautiful results.  Use what you have on hand, it seems you can’t go wrong!