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No-Knead French Rolls!

By Eric Muller

I am a huge fan of the no-knead French bread recipe that has been making the rounds since it appeared in the NY Times quite some time ago. It is simplicity itself: you just barely mix 3 cups of bread flour, 3/4 T kosher salt, 1/2 t yeast, and 1 -1/2 cups of warm water. And I really mean just barely. (Why do you think it's called "no-knead" bread?) Then you let it sit for 18 hours. It's a goopy mess, but you, undeterred, dump it out on to a floured work surface and kind of fold it in itself a couple of times. Then you let it sit again in a warm place for 2 or 3 hours. Then you unceremoniously dump the glop into a pre-heated cast-iron or ceramic pot in a 450-degree oven for 1/2 hour covered and then another 10 minutes uncovered. And voila! You've got a French loaf with a crust and a flavor and a crumb that you simply will not believe. It's as good as anything you'll find at a specialty bakery, believe me. The only issue I've encountered is that the bread stales fast, and I'm never able to eat the whole loaf quickly enough (unless I am being particularly gluttonous). So I've wanted to make little mini-loaves that I can freeze and defrost day-by-day. But where do you find little mini cast-iron or ceramic pots for baking? The whole secret to the baking process is that the pot serves as its own self-contained oven, keeping in the moisture during the baking to get a fabulous crust. My big Le Creuset pot makes a beautiful big loaf, but can't make little ones. Or so I thought. Then, one recent day, I noticed my local grocery selling little cast-iron dishes that you'd use to make, oh, I don't know, little flans or puddings or something. And I thought -- why not put a few of these inside my big pot, dump a small amount of the bread dough into each of the little dishes, and then put the cover on the big one they're sitting in? It worked like a charm. Yum.

Full post as published by Is That Legal on March 09, 2008 (boomark / email).