Everyone loves a nice, warm loaf of homemade crusty artisan bread, but let’s be honest who has the time? Although making fresh bread seems impossible with the limited time we have in a day. This no-knead recipe takes 5 minutes of hands-on time, and leaves you with a delicious loaf of bread every time!

I love making this recipe on Sundays so my family can have bread for the week. It is simple and quick so you won’t have to worry about stretching and folding your dough as you would with sourdough.

Ingredients:

The amazing thing about bread is that you only need a few pantry staples to make this!

flour
yeast
salt
water

How to make no-knead bread:

The trick to making sure that your bread comes out amazing each time is to make sure your yeast activates. I have always used Fleischmann’s Active Dry Yeast and it hasn’t failed me yet. Whichever yeast brand you end up using, read through the instructions on the back. There will be a range of temperatures you will need your water to be at to activate the yeast. If your water is too hot it will kill the yeast and your bread won’t rise. Before I had a kitchen thermometer I would just gauge the temperature by dipping a finger into the water. Learn from my mistakes, and do NOT do this. I had lots of loaves that looked more like giant pancakes than bread because of this.

Activate the yeast

After making sure you have read the instructions for your yeast and have your water at the right temperature dump your yeast packet into the warm water and dissolve the yeast by stirring. Wait about ten minutes to make sure the yeast is properly activated. You will know that the yeast is active by the foam appearing on the top of the water.

Measuring ingredients

For the next step, measure out the flour. Measuring the flour with a scale is best so you get the same results every time. Measure 450 grams of flour and add to a bowl. Then, add salt to the flour as well. I like to use about 12 grams to give it just enough flavor without being salty.

Now add in water and yeast then stir. Combine the ingredients until there is no more dry flour. Once all the dry and wet ingredients are incorporated STOP mixing. Form the dough into a ball and let it rest in a covered bowl for an hour and a half.

After your dough has rested you’ll notice it has grown by quite a bit. This is good! Put your ball of dough on a floured piece of parchment paper. The dough will have lost its shape from moving it to the parchment paper so it will need to be formed into a ball again. Now cover the newly formed ball of dough with the bowl it was just resting in (we’re not trying to do more dishes here) and let it rest for an hour.

How to make this no-knead bread recipe:

Next, set your oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit and put your Dutch oven in the oven to heat up. Now flour the surface of the dough and score it! You can get as fancy as you want or leave it simple. I usually just do three score marks.

I don’t use a fancy scoring utensil just a sharp knife! Flour the knife first to prevent it from sticking.

Once the oven reaches 450 degrees Fahrenheit put the parchment paper with your scored dough in the Dutch oven with the lid. Let it bake for 45 minutes with the lid on. Next, take off the lid and bake for another 10-15 minutes.

After the bread looks nice and golden take it out of the Dutch oven and let it rest for about an hour. If you ask me the hardest part of making bread is definitely waiting for it to cool! Now enjoy your delicious homemade no-knead bread!