Red Pot Bread

This is really just No Knead Bread, but since I make it in a red pot, it has become known as red pot bread in our house.

Working with yeast has a bad reputation. People are intimidated by yeast. I was. But don’t be. The hardest part about many breads is planning. It does take time for the yeast to rise, but the hands-on time is pretty small and the results can be amazing.

This bread takes about 10 hours minimum. You can start it first thing when you get up or mix the dough and let it sit overnight and bake it the next day.

Ingredients

• 3 1/3c (400g) AP flour
• 1 teaspoon yeast
• 1 1/2 (11g) teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups warm water

Instructions

1. Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit for at least 8 hours. The dough will be a big sticky mess. When it is ready there will be a lot of bubbles on the surface.
2. Preheat oven to 450 with the Red Pot, including the lid, in the oven.
3. Remove the pot from the oven and carefully place the dough in the pot. This will be messy. Coating your hands with some flour before you dig the dough out of the bowl will help a little. Be gentle. You want to preserve as many of the bubbles in the dough as possible. Remember the pot is extremely hot so be very careful.
4. Bake with lid on for 30 minutes
5. Remove lid and bake an additional 15 minutes or until nicely browned.
6. When you take the bread out of the oven immediately remove it from the pot and put it on a rack to cool. Let it cool at least 30 minutes before cutting into it.

Notes

1. I normally use AP flour. I should experiment and see how it comes out with bread flour.
2. You can also mix all the ingredients together the night before. When I do it that way I use about 1/2 teaspoon of yeast.
3. Occasionally the bread sticks to the pot. I haven’t figured out why, but here are a few things to try:
   • Make sure the pot is clean. If there is any food stuck to the bottom of the pot the bread will stick to it.
   • Remove the bread from the pot right after cooking. The bread seems to stick if it is left sitting in the pot.
   • Use parchment paper. If you put the dough on parchment paper about an hour before cooking you can just lift the parchment paper and put it in the pot. I’ve had mixed luck with this approach. Sometimes the bread sticks to the parchment paper. It does make it easier to put the bread in the pot.
4. After the lid and pot come out of the oven they can stay very hot for a long time. Be very careful. Warn anyone else in the house not to touch them. You may want to come up with some kind of signal like a kitchen towel to mark the hot pot.