no-knead crusty artisan bread

I'm certainly not helping my husband's weight loss goals, but I just have to make loaf after loaf of delicious homemade artisan bread.  I'm going to post the recipe below, but here and here are the links to the original pages that got me started.  Their instructions are much more detailed with excellent pictures of the process and I highly recommend checking them out.  This post is mainly for myself to have a more concise recipe and to not have to scroll down through a zillion photos to read off a recipe that I really should have memorized by now.  This bread is really simple and you truly can't mess it up.  Even when your husband sticks the dough in the fridge overnight because he thought you'd left it out on accident.

No-Knead Crusty Artisan Bread

3 cups of flour*
1 3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp yeast**
1 1/2 cups warm water

* can be regular all purpose flour, whole wheat flour, bread flour or any combination
** I found that a heaping 1/2 tsp helped the dough rise up better

Mix everything together in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and leave out on the counter for 12-18 hours, up to 24 hours.  I do this step in the evening and then bake it the following day.  When you're ready to bake, heavily flour a towel and dump out the dough.  To help combat the ridiculous stickiness, I sprinkle it with flour before I dump it and then sprinkle more as I pry it away from the sides of the bowel.  Shape it roughly into a ball (remember, no need to knead) and then wrap it with the towel and let it sit for 15 minutes.  It won't really rise too much, but perhaps it will more once the weather changes.  After 15 minutes, get out your cast iron dutch oven (see the links above for more ideas if you don't have a dutch oven) and place it in the oven to preheat at 450 degrees.  Then set the timer for another 15 minutes so that your dutch oven is piping hot.  After that time has elapsed, pull the oven out of the oven, remove the lid, plop in your dough by flipping it in with the towel (be careful, its HOT!) replace the lid and bake for 30 minutes.  When the 30 minutes are up, remove the lid and bake for another 10 minutes.  Bread will be done when the internal temp is 200 degrees.

Now the hard part... DO NOT CUT OPEN the bread until it has totally cooled to room temperature.  But it smells SO GOOD.  How can you not cut it open, slather a thick slice with butter and chow down?  Well, you can, but then your bread will go all dense on you and not keep those light airy bubbles.  It took me a few times to learn this lesson.  The bread is still yummy (and almost worth it to eat that warm, luscious bread) if you cut it open early, just more dense than if you used self-control and waited.

Recommended storage is simply keeping it in the dutch oven on your stove top.  Apparently putting it in a plastic bag will mess with the crust.  This size of loaf works best for our family (the second link I posted is for a loaf double this size) because we are trying not to eat a ton of carbs and the loaf does dry out.  If the bread does get a bit dry, it makes amazing toast.

And now, the (phone quality) pictures: