No-Knead Dutch Oven Bread (5 ingredients!)

Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Dimitra's Dishes. Today I'm going to teach you how to make my no-knead Dutch oven bread. You don't need any special equipment to make this. It comes together in five minutes and then all the rising is no hands necessary, no work necessary. It just happens on its own. It's delicious, crispy on the outside. It looks and tastes like bakery bread and maybe even better and it's healthier because you've made it at home with good quality ingredients. Let's get started. Okay, so we're going to begin by making the dough. In a large bowl, we're going to add three cups of either all-purpose flour or bread flour. I'm using all-purpose because that's what I always have on hand. But if you have bread flour, it'll come out even better. But this works. Next, I'll add one and a half teaspoons of salt, a tablespoon of granulated sugar, and two teaspoons of active dry yeast. And this is for the quick rise method. I do prefer the overnight method. And to do that, it's all the same ingredients except instead of adding two teaspoons of active yeast, you're going to add half a teaspoon. That's it. And then the liquid is the same for both ways. One and a half cups of lukewarm water. We're just going to mix this all up beginning with a wooden spoon. And then it's going to be too hard to handle with the spoon. I'm just going to go in with my hands and just mix everything together until there are no longer any streaks of flour. And at this point, I'm just going to cover it with some plastic wrap. You can use a clean kitchen towel. If you're doing quick rise and you've used two teaspoons of yeast, then you're going to let this rise until it's doubled in volume. That can take between one to two hours. If you're doing it overnight, you can leave it at room temperature for 12 hours or up to 18 hours. And it's going to take that long for it to double up in volume. Next, we're going to get a Dutch oven ready. Now, make sure that it's clean because if you have anything in there that hasn't cleaned off properly, it's just going to get darker as it bakes in the oven. We're going to take the cold Dutch oven and put it in the cold oven and turn the oven on to 450 degrees Fahrenheit and let it preheat together. This is going to prevent the enamel from chipping or cracking or anything like that. You never want to put a cold pot in a hot oven. That'll cause it to crack most likely. Okay, so while that's happening, we're going to take the dough and I'll lightly flour my counter and just roll the dough out. It's going to be really sticky, so you might need extra flour for this. Just roll it up into a ball. And then once it's rolled up, you're going to take a piece of parchment paper. This is just going to make the transfer very easy and also safe too. And we're going to lightly flour the top of the parchment paper and put the ball of dough on top. Cover it with a clean kitchen towel while the oven preheats. This is going to take between 30 to 40 minutes, so that way the oven gets nice and hot and at the right temperature. And the dough is also going to fluff up a little bit more. If it spreads out too much, then just roll it up one more time before you bake it and you don't have to wait for it to rise at this point. But get your Dutch oven out really carefully wearing oven mitts. Take the lid off and then just carefully with the parchment paper, put the bread in the Dutch oven and let it bake covered for 30 minutes. Uncover it and let it bake for about 15 minutes or until it gets nice and golden. The longer you keep it in there, the crispier and the darker the bread is going to get. It's totally up to you. Once it comes out of the oven, you want to let it rest at room temperature for at least 20 to 30 minutes and then it'll be ready to serve. Okay, so you might have noticed that there are differences in the two breads. So the slow rise bread, the one that rose overnight and that has less yeast, it's a little better looking. It's more rounder, it held the design that we made on top. It just looks nicer overall. The texture on the inside is identical and on the outside, they're both very crispy and they're both very soft and good on the inside. The slow rise method does make a little bit of a tastier bread. It gets a little bit of a tanginess to it, almost like sourdough, but not exactly. It's really good, but the quick rise looks just a little flatter and the design kind of melted into the bread. And that's not really because of the greater amount of yeast. It's because it works faster. There's more yeast in there, so it just works faster and rises faster. So even though they both sat out for the same amount of time while the oven was preheating, the one with more yeast flattens out quicker. You're just going to have to put it in the oven quicker, but the way to fix that is to just roll it out again before you put it in the oven. Not roll it out, but roll it into a ball again, kind of bring it back together and it'll rise beautifully and almost look identical to the slow rise method. I hope that makes sense. I'll write it much better and more easier to understand on the blog post. They're both delicious. They're both going to look beautiful too, but that's a little trick for you to know. If it flattens out, just put it back together and form it into a ball and you don't have to let it rise again. Just carefully put it in the pot. Be very careful when handling the pot. Definitely use oven mitts because it's going to be so scorching hot. Like I said, gather it all together, put it back in the pot. The parchment paper really makes the handling of everything much easier and the cleanup easier too. One more tip. Make sure that your pot is clean before you put it in the oven because any little stains that are in there are just going to get darker when it's baking at that high temperature. Time for the taste test. I can't wait anymore. You can hear how crunchy it is even though it's been sitting here for a little while. I love to dip this in some olive oil. So good. Absolutely delicious. So easy to make. I hope you guys give this recipe a try. You can flavor it with your favorite herbs. You could even add feta cheese to it. If you want me to teach you how to do different flavor variations, post them down below in the comments and I'll get to them. You can freeze this bread. So if you're making several batches, once they come out of the oven, once they're fully cooked, let them come to room temperature. Let them cool down completely. Then you can put them in freezer-safe bags or wrap them with plastic and then foil, and they'll stay fresh in the freezer for a couple of weeks. Take them out, thaw them out, and then just toast them in the oven before you serve them. I hope you guys give this recipe a try. The exact measurements are on the website, DemetriusDishes.com. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. I'll see you all next time. Yia sas.