Jim Lahey's No Knead Bread

My girl friend sent me a marvelous picture of a round crust-cracked loaf of bread and said she was experimenting with different ingredients. She told me to google 'bread that a four year old can make'. So I googled and found a web site by Steamy Kitchen and she had pictures of her four year old making the bread. It was true; a four year can make the bread. Harold McGee, quoted on E Curry blog site explained that it works because the bread is allowed to rise over many hours which is the same as kneading it for minutes. He states, "the gluten molecules [go] into side-by-side alignment to maximize their opportunity to bind to each other and produce a strong, elastic network. The wetness of the dough is an important piece of this because the gluten molecules are more mobile in a high proportion of water, and so can move into alignment easier and faster than if the dough were stiff.” Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery in New York invented the recipe and Mark Bittman published the recipe in 2006. Here is the recipe for my first experiment. Sift 1 and 1/2 cups white flour with 1 and 1/2 cups whole wheat flour. Add 2 tsp kosher salt, 1/4 tsp instant yeast, 1 tbsp honey and 1 and 1/2 cups of warm water. Cover. Let rise in a warm place for 12 to 20 hours. I let my bread rise for 15 hours. Put on floured tea towel and cover and let rise for 2 hours. Heat a covered ungreased pot in a 450 degree oven for 30 minutes. Drop dough into the pot. Cover. Bake at at 450 degrees for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake for 15 to 20 minutes. The result? The loaf looked great. The top was nicely browned and slightly cracked. The insides were chewy but a little too dense for my liking. As I was slicing the bread I thought it would be a killer sandwich because the bread was so firm. The picture shows a side view and you can see a few air bubbles. However, I am going to try to make this bread again because the other posts commented on the wetness of the bread dough and my dough was not wet and according to McGee I should have had wet dough to let the molecules slide around. My dough was not sticky and extremely easy to manage. In fact I questioned if I had put in sufficient water. For my next experiment, I am going to make the loaf entirely with white flour. Can't wait.