Overnight No Fuss Cheap Ass Bread
Making bread can seem like a fussy time waster for trust fund hipsters, but we have found an incredibly simple recipe from dontwastethecrumbs.com that only requires a bit of planning and almost no hands on effort. It’s cheap, and perfect for making over the weekend when you can leave it and forget about it and go back to your entertainment of choice.
Essentials:
Cast iron Dutch oven
Mixing bowl
Ingredients:
3 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp salt
1 tsp active dry yeast
1 ½ cups room temperature water
Instructions:
Combine flour, salt, and yeast in appropriately sized mixing bowl. Stir.
Add water. Mix well. Dough will be hard to stir and shaggy. This is normal. Don’t worry, you didn’t screw it up.
Cover with a towel and let rise overnight at room temperature, 8 - 18 hours. If you’re in a comparative hurry, put the bowl over something warm, like a stereo, an oven, or a heating vent. Just make sure it’s only warm, about body temperature at the maximum, and check on your dough so it doesn’t turn into the furry slime monsters the Third Doctor was so fond of fighting. If your yeast is healthy the dough should bubble and rise.
It’s been at least 8 hours (give or take). You’re starving. Flour hands and workspace, form dough into a vague spherical lump. Don’t be afraid to use a flamboyant amount of flour; this will save your fingernails and counters from being encrusted in rocklike dried dough. Do not knead. Let rest another hour (yes I know, it’s terribly unfair. Snack on a granola bar if you’re too hangry to not contemplate murder).
After dough has rested 30 minutes, preheat oven to 450 and put the dutch oven in the oven - ovenception - minus lid. Leave in until bread has rested 30 more minutes.
Remove pot from the oven, flour it lightly, set dough in pot. Put lid on pot. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes.
Remove lid, bake for another 15 minutes, or until top is golden brown.
Remove from oven. Allow to cool for thirty minutes in a spot where air flow can breeze past the top and the bottom of loaf. A wire rack is nice, or you might be able to use a cold burner, or a wide mouth cup. Or, if your talent is telekinesis, congratulations, you are the future of bread making.
Eat like cookie monster. But with butter. Or jam. Or tuna. Or sardines. Hell yeah.
