Vegan MoFo #26: No Knead Bread

Today's post features another kick-ass bread recipe from Joe, courtesy of the New York Times. This bread, hot out of the oven at about 10pm on a Saturday evening, provided the perfect accompaniment to the DVD of "Talking Heads," an astonishingly funny, moving and thought-provoking series of monologues written by Alan Bennett and performed by the likes of Maggie Smith, Eileen Atkins and Bennett himself (check it out, it's well worth your time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_chip_in_the_sugar). With some Earth Balance, raspberry jam, and a nip of whisky, it was exactly what our...um...cravings required!

No-Knead Bread (Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery)
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

Ingredients:
~ 3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
~ ¼ teaspoon instant yeast
~ 1¼ teaspoons salt
~ Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

Directions:
~ In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.
~ Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.
~ Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
~ At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes.
~ Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.