No-Knead Bread, Revisited (Published 2021) (2024)

I remember where I was when the baking revolution began. Do you?

It was November 2006, and I was a test cook at Cook’s Illustrated magazine in Brookline, Mass., when I walked over to see what my colleagues were gawking at. It was a loaf of bread that my fellow test cook David Pazmiño had just transferred to a cooling rack. I remember the loud snaps and pops coming from the bread as it cooled, the glossy crust crackling. He cut off a slice, revealing an open, airy hole structure with a moist, custard crumb. It was extraordinary.

It was Jim Lahey and Mark Bittman’s no-knead bread, then recently published in The New York Times.

“This was the recipe that democratized bread-baking,” says Peter Reinhart, a chef-instructor at Johnson & Wales University and the author of “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice” (Ten Speed Press, 2001).

As a recipe writer, I consider it a win if I can improve an existing technique, either by making it more simple and foolproof, or by tweaking it to produce markedly superior results. The no-knead bread recipe accomplished both of those goals simultaneously. The process is simple: Mix flour, water, salt and yeast in a bowl just until they all come together. Cover the bowl and let it sit on your counter overnight. The next day, shape it into a loose loaf, let it proof, then bake it inside a preheated Dutch oven with the lid on. That’s it.

Francisco Migoya, an author of the five-volume “Modernist Bread” (The Cooking Lab, 2017), called it “the gateway bread.”