No Knead failure?

Greedily I bought a Le Creuset to make No Knead Bread (but justified the cost by telling myself I would make other things in it). It’s been 4 months and I’ve used it to make some awesome risottos and soups. What about the intended purpose? Never got around to it until now.

As everyone and their mom have made this bread with adaptations to the recipe to yield an even better result, I just dove right in and forgot about looking up those helpful hints and tips. I found this video afterwards and realized my dough was too gooey. I will use 1 1/2 cups of water next time. Before making this I also realized I didn’t have instant yeast, only dry active yeast. I wish I had found Smitten Kitchen‘s note to use 1/3 teaspoon.

When I poured the dough onto the counter to make it into a ball I thought for sure it was going to fail. Was I going to be the first one who screwed up No Knead Bread? I kept going and eventually poured the unshapened dough into the pot.

The result?

Excuse the jagged cut marks, I’m hoping to upgrade our Target Chefmate knives to some fancier (sharp) ones.

It still tasted good! The crust is very very crunchy. It was pretty easy to make that next week I’ll make it again with some adjustments. It went stale pretty quickly and I gave a chunk to my dog who then proceeded to chew on it for a good 5 minutes and then drank his ENTIRE bowl of water.

This wasn’t a mind blowing bread for me (the brioche? Now THAT was mind blowing), but I am definitely making it again with adjustments.