Tuatha’an No-Knead Bread
Today we join the Tuatha’an (Traveling People) of the Westlands for dinner. The meal was a thick turnip curry served with crusty no-knead bread. I happily requested the easy bread recipe to share with you! The Tuatha’an travel the lands in brightly colored wagons, welcoming all to their warming fires and gladly sharing meals and song and dance. They travel in search of a song, lost during the Breaking of the World, that legends say will bring peace back to the world. They follow the Way of the Leaf, a non-violent (and vegetarian) life where no one uses weapons. It is not an easy life, but their dedication is admirable. I hope they find their song someday.
For now, we celebrate bread. The simple ingredients go into a container for rising while they pack up in the morning and prepare for the day’s travels, and dough is ready to cook for dinner with no complicated kneading schedule. Another batch gets ready to rise overnight for baking at breakfast time.
Tuatha’an No-Knead Bread
Equipment
- 1 Dutch oven pot plain cast-iron or enameled, either works
- 1 Very large bowl for dough to rise in
- Metal trivets to put hot lid and pot on optional but recommended
Ingredients
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 ¾ tsp table salt
- ½ tsp yeast regular is best
- 1 ½ cups water room-temperature
- Handful of corn meal regular, not coarse
Instructions
- In a LARGE mixing bowl, mix together flour, salt and yeast. Add water and mix. The bowl should have extra space for the dough to expand by two or three times.
- Cover bowl with plastic wrap and set aside for 12 – 18 hours. Overnight or all day at work is great.
- Heat oven to 450 degrees F (mine takes about 15 minutes).
- When the oven is preheated, place a cast iron pot with a lid in the oven (the lid doesn't need to pre-heat, just need to make sure the pot has one) and heat the pot for 30 minutes.
- While the pot is heating, pour dough onto a heavily floured surface and shape into a ball. Dough will be very wet and sticky – use just enough flour to get it into a rough shape that you can pick up for dropping into the pot. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let sit for 30 minutes.
- Remove hot pot from the oven and sprinkle in a generous handful of corn meal, then drop in the dough. Put the lid on the pot and return pot to oven for 30 minutes.
- After 30 minutes remove the lid and bake an additional 15 minutes uncovered. (Note, this lid is HOT and may scorch or melt hot-pads, so a metal trivet or something similar is good to have on hand to rest this on.)
- Remove pot from oven. Remove bread from pot (use hot pad mitts, protect your knuckles!) and place bread on a cooling rack to cool. Let it cool before slicing.
