Even though I’ve made it a few times now, homemade bread has always been something I put in the “do-able but time-consuming” category. It’s something I’ve conquered, but for the everyday- I don’t often have the energy to deal with making dinner as well as homemade bread on the side. Well- this recipe has truly changed my views on bread forever! It literally takes 5 minutes to prepare the dough, it sits out overnight, and bakes up in no-time.
It’s possible you’ve seen a version of this recipe before. My Mother-in-law made a couple different batches when we visited recently, and ever since I’ve had it on the brain. Where this concept actually originated? Who knows. I mean making bread from nothing but flour, yeast, salt and water must be an ancient concept right? Around the same time my MIL sent me her recipes, I found a great post on via Pintrest with a tutorial of almost the exact same recipe. I knew it was time to see how easy this bread actually was to make. Because really- how could this perfect golden, crusty bread be so simple? I’ve outlined the process below:
The four ingredients (flour, yeast, salt and water) are combined in a large bowl and simply stirred together.
No kneading is necessary, and the goal here is a messy, shaggy dough which is covered in plastic wrap, and left to sit on your counter overnight. (8-18 hours.)
After that time has passed, the dough will look puffy and bubbly, and will be a bit sticky to the touch.
Turn the dough onto a floured surface and shape it into the ball.
After the oven (and dutch oven) have pre-heated- in the bread dough goes- to bake for 30 minutes covered and 15 minutes un-covered to crisp and brown the top. Covering your dutch oven while baking creates a steamy affect, which makes the inside perfectly soft while creating a perfect, golden, crust.
Right out of the oven- I mean come on… It’s that easy! There are many options for mix-ins and different flavorings with this recipe, and I promise to share any gems I discover along the way.
*No dutch oven? I’ve done a little research on the subject, and it seems to can still get crusty bread without one. Any heat-safe covered pot will do, as long as any handles/knobs are safe to be heated up to 450F. The cover is what really locks the steam in and creates the perfect texture. Here is a great forum about alternative options.
(One other method that my MIL also used, involves a steam bath on the bottom shelf while the bread bakes on a pizza stone or baking sheet. Put a broiler pan or baking dish in the oven while it’s preheating, and right before baking- carefully pour a cup of hot water into it. Shut the oven door quickly and let the steam do it’s thing!)
Ingredients
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups luke-warm water
- 1-2 tsp sea salt
- 1/2-1 tsp yeast*
Instructions
- In a large bowl, stir together the flour, salt and yeast. Add the water and using a wooden spoon stir together until the mixture resembles a shaggy dough.
- Cover dough with a plastic wrap and let sit in room temperature for 8-18 hours. Dough will bubble up and rise.
- After dough is ready, preheat oven to 450 F.
- Turn the dough onto a well-floured surface and with floured hands form the dough into a ball. Cover with the plastic wrap and let the dough rest.
- While dough is resting, put your dutch oven into the preheated oven for 30 minutes.
- After the 30 minutes are up carefully remove the dutch oven and with floured hands place the bread dough into it. (You can put a piece of parchment under it if your dutch oven doesn't have an enamel coating.)
- Replace the cover and bake for 30 minutes covered. Then remove the cover and bake for an additional 15 minutes uncovered. Bread will be golden, crusty and delicious!
Notes
*I used a full teaspoon of yeast because I like the flavor in bread. 1/2 teaspoon will work as well if you do not!
I like salt a lot- I have added up to 3 teaspoons to this recipe and it's been great!
Recipe from my Mother-in-Law with lots of help from this post from Simply So Good.
I love this bread, have made it a couple times and now want to add cinnamon and raisins but not sure
of the amounts of each to add. Can anyone out there help?
Hey Cheryl! You’ll have to experiment a bit but I’d say 1/2 cup of raisins to start and a tablespoon of cinnamon. Of course more/less depending on how much you like :)
Anyone tried to make it into a sour dough loaf. Any suggestions?
Thank you so much for posting this recipe. I am making it for the second time today. The first time I made it, it turned out perfect. Love your blog!!!
Yay! I am so glad to hear that. Thanks so much for reading and taking the time to comment. :)
I’ve made bread of all kinds for many years and this is by far the easiest I’ve ever attempted. It literally looks just like your picture and it was done in a corningware dish in the oven. Even my dogs, who are avid bread lovers, gave it 2 paws up!!!
I’m so glad you found it easy too! Isn’t it the most satisfying thing to pull it out of the oven? :)
Can you use whole meal or rhy flower instead of white all purpose flour. Will it still work?
Hey Mary- I don’t recommend wheat flour but my Mother-in-law says she has subbed some rye flour in with success! If you scroll through the comments you can see her notes. Her name is Sue :)
Tried this out today, and it was great! It worked exactly as you said it would, and tasted great. It’s going to be a regular in our house, I believe! So good for moms who find it hard to make regular bread because of timing!
Audra, I’m in awe of how this turned out! I followed your recipe exactly and I now have a beautiful artisan bread! It’s so crusty yet fluffy, and I can’t believe how easy it was! A couple notes though.. mine needed only 9 hours rising and 7 minutes to bake uncovered before it was golden brown. Thank you SO much for the recipe! I hope you don’t mind if I share it at some point, with credit to you of course! :)
I’m so glad you liked it Georgia!! It’s it amazing how simple it is?
Of course share away! This is a recipe that everyone needs to have.
Good to know that there’s a range for the browning time- I should note that! I think if you let it rise longer- it still ends up OK- One day I left it for 24 hours and it just had a richer yeastier taste! :)
I might do the same thing as Georgia, if that’s fine by you! :)
Of course!!
Could you please more specifically address that issue raised by Joy on March 25 re: manufacturer’s instructions to NOT heat my new cast iron enamel coated pot while empty, yet your instructions say to preheat it empty for 30 min. @ 450 degrees. How can I be sure preheating wont damage my new pot? If I oil the pot first, will this make it “not empty”? Will the oil discolor the new whit surface? Is this what you’re talking about that can be removed with Barkeepers Friend and a gentle scrubbing? Sorry for all the questions, and thanks for the help.
Hey Val- I did answer her question- if you scroll down you’ll see my reply right under hers.
I use my new Le Creuset and have had no problems. I don’t suggest any sort of oil in the pan. This is a very common form of bread-making and it doesn’t seem to be an issue. Sometimes the very outside rim of the dutch oven gets a little bit of black soot-like residue after baking- but it easily cleans up with a soft sponge and some barkeepers friend.
OK, thanks!
Hey guys, about the le creusets:
If you have a black round handle on the top (or any handle that isn’t the same material as the pot itself) make sure it can handle the high oven temps!
When I was looking to buy one, I noted that the box said it was oven proof to 375, but I didn’t think that was a problem because normally dutch ovens are “low and slow.”
Then when I was researching this recipe (it’s part of the reason I bought a dutch oven, after seeing it everywhere around the internet) I see that it calls for a super high oven heat. And one website mentioned that people’s black caps are exploding!
You can get a new one from le creuset (the webpage mentioned that the company would send one for free) or you can order a stainless steel one that can take the higher temps. supposedly. Luckily for me, I ended up finding on in the size I needed on clearance, and it is an older model I guess, looks different than all the ones you see online/in stores atm and has a built in handle, so I think it will be fine.
Hi I am making this bread as we speak. It is on its last 15mins in the oven. I can not wait to try it, thanks for sharing this recipe with us all.
You’re so welcome. ! I hope you liked it! :)
Hi I am making this bread as we speak. It is on its last 15mins in the oven. I can not wait to try it, thanks for sharing this recipe with us all.
The bread was amazing and the whole family loved it. I used a covered casserole dish and it worked out great. I would describe the bread as a baguette type of texture and taste. Just a wonderful recipe and I am making another loaf for tomorrow. Thanks again.
Hello! I’m dying to try this recipe over the weekend but I don’t have a dutch oven… Do you think a casserole dish (which I believe is ceramic?) with a glass lid would be okay to use? I mean it’s obviously oven safe as it is a casserole dish, but… Lol, I’m just worried I may damage it or ruin the bread!
Thanks in advance :)
Yes that will work just fine!
I want to make this but I have a question! I just bought my first Le Creuset piece (to make this bread) and in reading the booklet that cane with it. It states to “never preheat a dry, empty pan” and it also states to never “dry cook” any foods – always grease/spray/prepare the pan before cooking. I certainly don’t want to ruin my brand new, expensive pan the first time I use it……but since you do this all the time, I’m assuming its really NOT an issue?????
Hey Joy! Mine is very new too and I use it no problem. Sometimes it needs to be cleaned well afterwards and the rim of the inside gets a little bit charred- but a little bar-keepers friend and a gentle sponge work just fine. You can also line it with parchment if you want- but I actually never have.
If you don’t want to use it for the bread- (though it’s the best) any covered oven-safe pot/dish would work! :)
It looks sooo tasty! Can I use dry yeast?!
Yup Vani- I used dry yeast!
Sorry for the late reply- this came in while I was in Europe and I just saw it. :)
I’ve been dying to try this. I don’t have a dutch oven, yet. Wonder if a clay roaster w/ lid would work? Might need to experiment tomorrow.
Absolutely!
This is literally the best bread ever!! I’ve wolfed down half a loaf already and it’s only been out of the oven for an hour. :) Thank you for sharing this great recipe.
I do the same thing. I can’t stop! So glad you enjoyed it :)
i just mixed my first batch of this bread going to let it set until dinner time tomarrow. if the family likes it i will do another one with jalapino’s and chedder.
Just made this tonight – great texture! Threw a sprinkling of kosher salt on the top, and it made the crust extra good!
Yay! A sprinkling of salt on the top sounds amazing!
I made this last night and it was fantastic! I’ve made the “artisan bread in 5 minutes” many times in the past and it never came out as beautiful as this loaf did. Having done the pizza stone/water bath and now the le creuset method, I can say that the latter is far better. With the pizza stone, the bread would often spread horizontally instead of vertically. The Le Creuset’s results were wonderful!! Do you have any ideas (besides eating it immediately from the oven!) for storing? I notice that the ‘crustiness’ goes away after a day.
I have experimented with this, and the only thing that kept it crusty for me was to store it in a paper bag. Anything else seemed to create moisture that made it soggy :)
I have found that substituting one cup of rye flour and adding 2 cups of grated parmesan and 1TBSP of chopped fresh rosemary makes a really good alternative for the all white
Oh great! Does it taste like Rye Bread?
It doesn’t taste like rye bread because you need caraway seeds for that, but the rye is not as overwhelming as whole wheat and doesn’t seem to have a negative effect on the texture and it lets the cheese and herbs stand out
I seriously can’t wait to try this! I keep hearing about a 5 minutes artisan bread! Thank you for posting! Sometimes there is nothing better than homemade bread! Its beautiful! ;)
Thanks Alaina! It’s seriously the easiest thing I’ve ever made. :D
I just made this bread for the first time (and my first time ever making bread) and it came out beautifully!
Yay! I’m so glad you liked it! :)
I love that such simple ingredients can combine to create such an amazing bread! This looks delicious and so simple, Audra! Thanks for sharing.
We made the bread this weekend. I added about 1 cup of shredded cheddar and some fresh (we have a plant) minced rosemary. Yummy! The hard part was waiting for it to cool enough to slice it.
I have one note: If your oven isn’t the cleanest, be prepared to run your exhaust fan on high. Running the oven at 450 for over an hour can generate fumes similar to running the oven cleaner. Mine was so-so. ;-)
Cheddar and Rosemary sound amazing! And thanks for the oven-cleaning tip!
I really need to try this out; I love making bread, but I hate kneading it and getting my counter all messy over and over again, hah. I just need to remember to get it all together the night before!
what a gorgeous loaf!
I don’t make homemade bread all that often either because it’s pretty much my kryptonite. Slice after slice after slice – I can’t stop :) I love this recipe though, it just doesn’t get any easier and your loaf is gorgeous!
Um, I must have done something wrong. It tasted, well bland. I made it sit for 8 hours because I wanted it for dinner. Will go longer next time. I think 20 – 25 minutes is perfect to make it golden. Just didn’t like the taste : (
Thank you for sharing.
Hmm- I’ve made this 3 times now and I have been adding extra salt which I like. Also, feel free to mix in some cheese/herbs etc. to add flavor?
This looks super fab! I’m like you – I’ve baked bread before but it seems *such* a faff. I’ve pinned this & will make it next weekend for a gorgeous Sunday breakfast. Thanks for sharing it.
Omgooodness, this looks amazing! I’d have a hard time stopping at one slice…
I sure did :) Had half of that loaf right after I took the pics! :)
Oh my goodness! The ingredient list is so short; I don’t think I’ve ever seen recipe that short before :) And crusty bread is sooo delicious! I love the texture and the crackle it makes when you pull it apart. Yum
Look at those air pockets…
Guess what’s for breakfast Sunday?!
what i “knead” is a dutch oven. like so bad. i am so jealous every time i see one!
I got mine for about $20 at an Aldi. Its’s no Le Creuset but it gets the job done.
Nice job, daughter-in-law
Thanks :) I can’t wait to try your other recipes!
Hi
I have a small oven proof porcelain pot with a lit. Can I use that one? Also will the bread rise a lot in the oven? Because my porcelain pot is pretty small ;) Thanks so much!
Hey! I think the porcelain pot would work just fine. In terms of the size- I used a 5.5 qt sized dutch oven and it was plenty big, (with much room to spare.) It will rise a bit, but not tons. Maybe break it into half batches if it’s extremely small?
Update: I made this with my Mom in a porcelain casserole-type dish with a cover. It worked great! :)
I love that this is made in your dutch oven!!
Me too! I need more reasons to justify the purchase! :)
no knead? Sold. I need to get better about making homemade bread. This sounds totally doable!
It really is! I’m usually such a scaredy cat too!
There’s nothing better than homemade bread and no knead? Bonus!!! Have to make this :)
Not much right? So easy! :)
I’ve never tried this recipe, but a steam bath & pizza stone works great with others. Thanks!!
Oh good to know! I’m gonna try that method next! :)
I made this EXACT recipe from Simply So Good and I’m stunned at how easy it was. I always find bread intimidating and this is as easy as it gets. My next plan to try some mix ins, like cheddar and chive or something.
And your loaf is picture perfect!
So great right? I’m gonna try some mix-ins this weekend!
Somehow when I used to make no-knead bread it never turned out that gorgeous! I’m quite enamored!
I would LOVE a slice of this for breakfast this morning. It’s gorgeous, Audra!