I recently stumbled across this recipe from five years ago, published in the New York Times about how to make bread without kneading. And it includes yeast. I had never made bread with yeast other than in a bread maker before and I was anxious to try this method after getting a dutch oven as a gift.

My new dutch oven is 3 quarts and the recipe makes reference to a 6 to 8 quart dutch oven so I decided to try to divide the recipe in half. I tried this twice. The first time was a disaster after just halving the ingredients exactly. The second time I used more yeast and more water and had better results. However, I decided that it would be better with actual bread flour instead of whole wheat flour and that I should use fresh yeast. After getting the new ingredients I went straight for the whole batch the first try. Huge difference! The 3 quart dutch oven worked just fine. I also only let the dough sit for about 6 hours instead of 12 before kneading it just a bit and letting it rise for about 3 hours instead of 2. It was hard to work the bread’s schedule into my schedule this weekend.

Initial dough – it’s a bit shaggy:

After kneading into a round shape and allowing to rise under a cotton towel (in a bowl so that the dough rises up instead of flat):

After baking, the bread is beautifully crusty:

The crust is quite thick, but after wrapping in foil and refrigerating the loaf, it wasn’t quite so hard. Just out of the oven:

You can see the bread is light and fluffy inside. Very chewy and quite delicious especially when toasted:

I definitely plan to make this again! Probably will try adding some herbs like rosemary or thyme sometime soon.