Herby No Knead Bread

I have a love hate relationship with bread.  I love it fresh out of the oven, with a pat of melted butter on it.  Is anything better?  Now that I am no longer 16, bread goes straight to my belly and thighs.  I had been wanting to make this No Knead Bread for months!  You know the recipe that went around the web 3 times and came back again.  I didn’t want to get too crazy, since I have been known to bomb on yeast recipes.  So I simply cut up some fresh herbs and tossed into this famous No Knead Bread recipe.  Can I tell you that the scent of it baking in the oven was almost more than I could bear.  The bread was perfect.  The crust was nice and crunch and the middle was soft, dense and chewy all at the same time.  I won’t bother reposting since you can find it in the NY Times and on hundreds of blogs.  I found the extra directions and cute pics at Steamy Kitchen to be super helpful! 

Success!  Can I tell you that the most exciting sound is to take this bread out of the oven and hear it crackling.  Sorry if you’ve seen this dozens of times, but I was super excited and had to document it!  =)   

With my many mishaps with yeast, I’ve learned that bubbles are a good thing.  I also learned the hard way you can kill yeast with too hot water! 

After 12 hours this was the transformation, I was so happy to see it looking that way in the morning.  Nothing is worse than seeing an un-risen blob….

Yipee!  It looks perfect.  I can’t wait to try this with other add ins, wheat flour, maybe some oats or honey as well.  I knew I was going to bake this up so I had bought an amazing container of roasted red bell pepper shallot goat cheese to spread on it.  So if you are afraid of yeast or making bread, take comfort in knowing that even I could do it- so you can too!  (Trust me it’s worth it!)