Alexandra Stafford’s No-Knead Peasant Bread

bomberqueen17:

I saw an excellent peasant bread recipe a while back and got all excited to try it, and then I saw this one somewhere too, and I left it open in a tab on my phone for literally months, and then I closed it. But I remembered the name of it because I saw it every time I opened a new Chrome tab on my phone. If you’re the person who posted a link to it, thank you! But I don’t remember why I had it open in a tab.

Anyway, I tried this recipe finally. Here’s the thing: I hate kneading bread. I mean, I like it, but i hate getting stuff on my hands, I had eczema between my fingers for like, a formative decade, so I just don’t get my hands wet much if I can help it, and, anyway. The point of this recipe, and what made it work for me, is that you literally never touch the dough with your hands. Not even to shape the loaves; they bake in bowls.

The version of this recipe on my phone was one of those ones with a blog entry beforehand where she waxes rhapsodic about vintage Pyrex, and goes on and on about which size bowl you gotta use.

I don’t have vintage Pyrex. I have two 1.5-quart Pyrex-ish casserole dishes.

I made this in those. It worked fine. 

And here, the true acid test: I left the recipe scribbled on a piece of paper (I never can cook straight off the phone or computer, I always hand-write recipes) and said offhand to Dude that we could have more of that great bread, and he successfully made this recipe from my abbreviated-to-fuck recipe with no notes. It was a little underdone but that’s not his fault. (Except that he didn’t realize it would take two hours, which ok my handwriting’s bad but if he read the whole recipe or paid attention the whole time I was making it while he was in the room, he’d know that. So he started at like, 6pm. Don’t do that.)

So anyway. Here’s my rec. Casserole dishes work fine if they’re smallish. 

I bet… *whispers* I bet you could do this in a loaf pan. Is that blasphemy? I bet you could. I have loaf pans, I might use them next time.

Alexandra Stafford’s No-Knead Peasant Bread