Baking bread from scratch is an accomplishment. Not because it’s necessarily difficult, although it can be. It’s an accomplishment because, with just flour, water, salt and yeast, you take part in a 30,000 year old baking tradition. It’s the same tradition your grandmother and her mother, and 100 mothers before her, have taken part in, and with the same meager ingredients. Also- it just tastes so much better.

However, not all of us have time, funds or space to make fresh bread every day, knead the dough, or buy fancy equipment. Some of us don’t even have an electric mixer! But don’t give up hope, there can still be homemade bread in your future. I’ve adapted a no-knead bread recipe that truly could not be easier. The yeast does nearly all the work for you, the dough keeps in the fridge for up to two weeks, and you don’t need any equipment you don’t already have. Plus, it tastes like the warmest, crispiest, fluffiest everything bagel you’ve ever had! Are you with me?

There are a couple things to keep in mind when making this recipe. This recipe yields a lot of dough. If you bake it all at once, you will have an enormous loaf. Enormous bread is awesome, but since this bread is homemade, it doesn’t have any icky preservatives, so it won’t stay soft as long as store bought bread. So, only bake what you can use in a few days, and keep the rest of the dough in the fridge until you need to bake more.

It’s also important to leave this loaf be while it rises. Seriously, just don’t touch it! When I say it’s no-knead, I really mean you shouldn’t knead it, since the yeast is busy making gas bubbles to lift and fluff-ify the bread. If you punch the dough down, knead it or squash those bubbles in some other way, you’ll end up with super dense, heavy bread rather than the happy, pillowy bread that you deserve! This bread wants you to relax while it takes care of the bubbles. Let the dough do its thing!

I hope you love this bread as much as I do! No-Knead 5-Minute Artisan Bread from Leite’s Culinaria.

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