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Published: November 8, 2006

Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising
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Forum: Cooking and Recipes

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

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

(copied to thread so that we can still get to it after free-access week is over!!!)

Yeah, maybe I should have made sure of this first. 20 minutes into preheating the pot, I go into the kitchen to check on the funny smell--my big enamel pot is fine, but for some reason, the little handle on top of the lid--which is lacquered to look enamel like the rest of it--has melted into the rest of the lid! (If we had batteries for our camera, I would have taken a picture).

Some heavy duty washing and airing out, and the bread is currently in the oven, with foil now standing in for the lid. I'll report how it turns out; if I don't, assume I've been poisoned by toxic melted pot fumes.

Just tried the bread--it's pretty freakin' great. Crackly crust is fantastic, just superb. The middle is a hair undercooked for my taste; I think this is a result of not preheating the pot because of aforementioned melting, washing, rushing, etc.

And the real news: Harold McGee has a blog. Finding this made me inordinately happy.

Bittman's "Summer Express": 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less

If you can afford the duck breasts, this, our dinner tonight, is pretty awesome. I cut the salad down to watercress, cilantro, and orange.

This looks awesome.

i had an open ravioli with seafood at gramercy tavern, and it was one of the best things i've tasted. very different from this, though, which does look great. i love hen of the woods mushrooms.

http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/11/gallery_turkey/Spice_Gun.jpg

wired

Bittman profile in the New York Observer

Mr. Bittman said he cannot update Fish because so many of the 70 species he wrote about have since disappeared.

this is outrageous.

he shld update it and tell ppl what fish they can eat then!

my sister hung out with him last month

Bittman's so good at this shit.

My mom taught me almost all of those things!

Except she uses (and I use) bouillon paste, canned tomato paste (have never seen or heard of these tubes!), and cheapo imitation syrup. Actually my mom taught me a good recipe for coconut-flavored pancake syrup which is YUM.

Had not heard of: pignoli.

Actually my Indonesian friend taught me the rest of the stuff. I wish fish sauce was sold in Las Cruces. :(

pignoli is just a fancy name for pine nuts! (I noticed that too; do Americans really call them pignoli?)

my mom calls it pignoli nuts but she always pretends to know other languages too so, blah

he's wrong about bouillon cubes, btw. the rapunzel ones are soft like paste and not too salty. i've never seen tomato paste in a tube either. i really don't trust him about anything anyway!

I've seen tomato paste in tubes, but only in super-fancy stores in big cities. That sensible stuff hasn't reached the hinterlands.

best food blog i know, srsly:http://www.101cookbooks.com/

Pine nuts here are called "pine nuts" or "pinons." About two months ago there were people on all kind of freemade stands – "PINONS – $10/bag" Pinon is how they say pine nut in Spanish. It's people that speak Spanish that are selling them. Makes sense!

pine nuts make me feel sick, even thinking about them

weird!

Tomato paste in tubes = all over the UK for as long as I can remember.

Only we call it tomato puree.

Eat for Eight Bucks series on SeriousEats is pretty good.

Thanks for the link. I made the French onion pasta tonight - pretty tasty!

Oh cool, that looked great. I might have to seek out that tiny pasta to make that.

yeah not tried any of those yet but that link looks great

this is a little old but i love anything w fergus henderson - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/magazine/22food-t-000.html?_r=1

a long lunch down the pub in Leeds or Eccles or Poole

Eccles? ECCLES? Has he ever been to fucking Eccles? Jesus wept. There are no long lunches down the pub. There are no pubs. They've all been burnt out.

http://www.oldsalford.co.uk/USERIMAGES/Eccles%20Co-op,%20Centenary%20House.jpg

Eccles, yesterday.

Do love Henderson, though.

Same for Poole, place is a shit-hole full of squaddies, venture out into the nearby countryside maybe. Fergus is cool though, St John may be my favourite restaurant ever.

the atlantic's started up a food section on their website: http://food.theatlantic.com/

Yes, you can make fish tacos.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/11/magazine/food-and-drink-issue.html

well, the op said "good food writing" and i love John's writing (full disclosure: he was our sous chef @ one time and one of the nicest people i've ever met in a kitchen):
http://www.jarrymag.com/jarrybriefs/2017/8/22/straight-up-passing-the-state-of-queer-chefs-in-america