The fastest - and absolutely best - no-knead bread ever

If you like baking or if you're a fanatic foodblog reader - or both - you probably know about the famous no-knead bread  made by New York baker Jim Lahey, the one that Mark Bittman of the NY Times has written about (and filmed the "how to" of).
If you don't, you can find Bittman's video here but I wouldn't waste a lot of time waiting for the long - 12 hours! - raising of a bread that can be made in a much faster way with just one very short raising session AND with amazingly good results. 

This no-knead bread comes from an Italian food forum called cookaround where user Nanino "perfected" the recipe originally written by Italian blogger adel1961 and it's incredibly easy and fast to make, leave alone great tasting and with a fantastic texture. Crunchy on the outside, chewy... oh no, that's Gary Larson. ;) I was saying: crunchy on the outside and wonderfully soft and alveolated on the inside.

With these quantities you can make three little ciabatta-like breads. This is the basic recipe but of course you can add walnuts, fresh herbs, olives and whatever else you like to the dough to create several types of bread from this one wonderful "base".
I've used Italian "00" flour with extra gluten specially made for pizza and I think I'll stick to it but I'm quite sure you can use plain flour too.
You'll be amazed at how good this bread looks and how great it tastes. And most of all, at how fast - as little as about two hours! - you'll have it on your table!

Nanino advices not to use baking parchment but a non-stick oven dish (teflon or similar) because then the bread gets a lot crunchier underneath. I haven't tried it myself, I'll do it next time instead of using the baking parchment (I read nanino's advice only after I made my ciabatta's which were quite great anyway...).

Italian no-knead bread

Ingredients:   

500 gr. of "00" flour (plain flour is also OK)
370 gr. lukewarm water
12,5 gr. fresh baker's yeast
1 teaspoon honey
2 teaspoons of salt

Dissolve honey and yeast in the lukewarm water.
Sieve the flour in a bowl, add the water with honey and yeast and mix everything briefly with a fork.  

Add the salt and mix further but not too long.
The dough has to be quite wet and lumpy like in the picture.

Cover the bowl with plastic film and leave to rest on a warm place, protected from cold air currents. Leave to rise for 1,5 hrs – shorter if you put the bowl on top of the hot oven (but make sure to protect the bottom of the bowl, for example with a chopping board,  if the oven top gets too hot, to avoid the dough from getting dry).

Pre-heat the oven at 240° C. After rising, the dough will look like this, all gluey with longs strands caused by the gluten:

 

Cover a low oven dish with baking parchment and sprinkle with flour.

Divide the dough carefully in 3 parts. It’s really sticky and you can divide it using a spatula and a bit of flour on your fingers to avoid it sticking to your hands.

Make 3 little ciabattas, sprinkle them with just a little flour and lay them in the oven for about 25 minutes or until they’re nice and golden brown.

Don’t forget to check the oven after about 15-18 minutes to see what the ciabattas look like: every oven is different and some are more powerful than others and need less time to bake the bread properly.




 

Comments

[Frank]

Wow! I'm not much of a baker but this looks easy enough even for me. And I love nice crunchy/chewy bread!

[Nicoletta]

Frank, I'm totally not a baker myself but this is too easy and too good not to try it and re-try it! :)

[Sophie]

These are so cute! The texture on the bread looks great, they'd be yummy for dipping. No knead! Impressive :).

[Nicoletta]

Sophie, no-knead AT ALL. :) Thanks for your comment :)

[giuliana videopirate]

ciao nicoletta, thank you. I am also een italiaanse meisje in Hamsterdam ! I m ready to try it!! uh la la. You wrote 370 g of water. Now I can measure the weight of water because I haven' t the right tool. Only measurements cups. What would be the right amount of water in ml. Bedankt hoor !! Giuliana

[chiaragatt]

fatta ieri sera....spettacolare! Grazie!!
:-)

[Nicoletta]

Bene Chiara, ne sono proprio contenta. :)

[Peter]

Grazie Nicoletta! I'd been looking for an easy ciabatta recipe. I baked this at high altitude (Mexico City, 2250 meters above sea level) and it came out great! For the altitude, I made these small modifications:

Add 20g gluten to normal flour
Add 110g of water
Reduce yeast x0.75
Reduce salt to 1 teaspoon
Reduce baking time