Crust & Crumb

Bread is good. However, I have never been a baker. I've stayed away from pastries, cakes, pies...pretty much all things that require a precise combination of ingredients, baking temperature, and time in the oven.

Part of the reason I've never baked bread is because I tend to prefer crusty, chewy bread over dense, dry brick loaves. But I always assumed that there was some secret to baking good bread that was squirreled away in the Catacombs of Paris.

Then, the other day, I came across a simple bread "no-knead" bread recipe with a picture that looked like this:














Pretty much my dream bread.
Turns out, it is pretty easy. Just flour, water, yeast, vinegar, and salt. The recipe also recommends putting in a bit of a light lager for some extra flavor.
I think the key is that you bake it in a round baking dish, like a Dutch oven or Pyrex, which you heat up to molten temperatures before baking the bread.
I could not believe that my bread came out so nice. It was everything I could have ever hoped for. I will now bake bread all the time.