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Have you heard of "no knead" bread? It is the easiest bread to make because there's virtually no work involved. You mix the four ingredients together and let the dough rise for 12-24 hours, fold it up, put it in a hot hot hot dutch oven for 45 minutes, and you've got delicious bread.

We discovered "no knead" bread on the Mark Bittman iPhone app, "How to Cook Everything." This app is a lifesaver because you can look up ingredients for recipes on your phone while shopping at the supermarket. And seriously, with this app, you can cook everything.

Mark Bittman is a food writer and cookbook author whose columns used to regularly appear in the New York Times.

Bittman got the "no knead" recipe from Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Street Bakery. Jim has a whole cookbook of great "no knead" recipes: My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method. When we first read about "no knead" bread it seemed too good to be true so we had to try it, and we've probably now made it 20 times since. Because of how unique and easy it is, and how great your house smells when you bake it, this is a MUST TRY recipe. :)

NO KNEAD BREAD

Ingredients:

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups water (room temperature)
• 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt

 DIRECTIONS: 

Mix the flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Add 1 1/2 cups water of water, and stir until it just comes together.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for at least 12 hours, and up to 24 hours, at room temperature. In the winter, we keep the bowl in our daughter's room which is the warmest in the house (she likes to taste the dough when she wakes up in the morning).

After 12 hours, it will have doubled in size and will be showing bubbles across the top.

Flour your work surface and dump the dough out (it will be quite sticky). Sprinkle some flour on the dough, pat it down, and let it rest for 15 more minutes.

You now want to form it back into a ball. You can do this easily by folding each of the 4 sides over onto itself.

Generously flour a smooth cloth towl, and turn the dough over (seam side down) into the towel.You can use bran or corn meal on the towel, but I like to keep the flavors simple, so I just use a healthy amount of flour. Fold the towel up.

Let rise for another two hours and unwrap.

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees with your dutch oven inside. Raise your rack as high as you can while still allowing the dutch over to fit. Make sure you are using a dutch oven that is safe to use throw in the oven - no plastic handles. We bought this inexpensive 5 quart Lodge Dutch Oven on Amazon just for baking bread.

Carefully drop your dough into the hot dutch oven, put the cover on, and place in the oven. Be careful handling your hot dutch oven. The dough is sticky, but don't worry about the shape. Just get it in the oven and it will work itself out as it cooks.

Cook for 30 minutes, remove the cover and cook for another 20-30 minutes, until the crust looks nice and brown. Let the bread cool on a rack for at least 15 minutes and enjoy!

Slice and serve with butter or olive oil! Delicious!

You can see Mark Bittman interview Jim Lahey while he makes his "No Knead" Bread in this video.

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