Hey guys it's Bettie from BakerBettie.com and welcome back to another video. Now
today I want to walk you through step by step how to make the easiest bread
recipe that you will ever make. And this is my four ingredient no-knead bread. Now
if you're somebody who is a little intimidated by working with yeast this
is definitely the recipe for you because it's going to get your feet wet
and make you feel much more confident. This bread turns out really crusty on
the outside and chewy on the inside. It's really rustic and it's perfect for
making sandwiches or you can simply just dip it in olive oil in vinegar and I
know you are going to be so impressed at how well this turns out with a very
little effort. So let's go ahead and dive into the recipe. Start with 3 and 3/4 cup
of flour and you can use all-purpose flour but if you do have a bread flour
definitely use that because it will give more chewiness to your bread. And one and
a half teaspoons of kosher salt and one seven gram package of yeast and this can
be either active dry or quick rice yeast. And now we're just going to go ahead and
stir all of those ingredients together until they are well combined. Ok so now
we need to warm up one and a half cups of water to about 120 to 130 degrees
Fahrenheit and you want to be careful that your water is not too hot here so
make sure that you use a thermometer if you do have one and if you don't have a
thermometer just check that your water is very warm but not hot to the touch or
you are risking killing your yeast. Now we're just going to pour that water
right into our dry ingredients and mix everything together with a spoon. As
you're stirring this up it might seem like there isn't quite enough water at
first but just keep stirring it's going to start coming together into a really
shaggy and sticky dough. I should also go ahead and add here that
if you wanted to you could add in some spices herbs cheese nuts or anything
that you wanted to use to flavor your bread. And that is it, that is all of the
work that you need to do to get this yeast dough together it is seriously so
easy. Okay now we're just going to cover up the bowl with some plastic wrap and
let it sit in a warm spot in your kitchen to ferment until it is double in
size. This should take about 45 minutes if you
did use quick rice yeast and about 75 minutes if you used active dry yeast. So
what is going to happen during this time is now that the dry yeast is hydrated it
is going to wake up from its dormant state and begin feeding on the starches
from the flour in our bread dough. As it feeds it's going to create carbon
dioxide gas and alcohol and that CO2 gas is going to make our bread dough rise
and the alcohol is going to add some flavor to our bread. Now that our dough
has risen it is ready to be shaped so just liberally dust the top of the dough
with flour and go ahead and dust your hands with flour as well. And to shape
the dough gently pull it away from the sides of the bowl and then gather all of
it up into your hands.
Start pulling down on all of the sides of the dough gathering it into a smooth
ball. Now we are going to let the dough rise again which is known as proofing.
This is going to build up more gases in our dough so that we get a nice airy
and flavorful loaf. Transfer your shaped dough onto a piece of parchment paper
and then cover it with plastic wrap. Let it proof for about an hour if you use
rapid rise yeast or ninety minutes if you used active dry yeast. While your
dough is proofing pre-heat your oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. You want to give
it about a full hour to preheat to really make sure that your oven gets
very very hot. Now I am also putting my Dutch oven in
to preheat and this is optional but the Dutch oven is going to give us the best
rise to our loaf and will help us achieve that really crispy outer crust.
Now that our dough is done proofing carefully remove the plastic wrap and
lightly dust the top of the loaf with a little bit of flour. Now honestly I was
very heavy-handed with my flour here so definitely be lighter with this. And now
I'm going to go ahead and score the top of my loaf in a square pattern but this
is optional you can definitely skip the scoring and just let it naturally open
in a really rustic way in the oven. Now if you aren't using a Dutch oven go
ahead and move your proofed loaf on to a baking sheet and place it in the oven
for about 30 to 45 minutes until golden brown. But since I am using a Dutch oven
I'm going to remove it using oven mitts and being very careful and now I am
moving my dough into the hot pot and putting the lid back on top. Now what is
going to happen is that hot Dutch oven is going to create a steamy environment
for our bread dough which is going to give it a really nice oven spring and
it's also going to create a crispy outer crust. So I'm going to bake the loaf with
the lid on for about 30 minutes and then remove the lid to continue
letting it bake for another 10 to 20 minutes until you get the color on the
crust that you like. Now I know how tempting it is to cut hot bread right
out of the oven but I'm going to encourage you to try to practice some
restraint here and move it to a cooling rack and let it cool for at the very
least an hour. Now look at how beautiful this loaf turned out, it's really crispy
on the outside it's fluffy and chewy on the inside and we put in such little
effort to make this loaf. I know you can make this if you're somebody that's
intimidated by baking with yeast I want you to get in there and try this loaf
you are going to be so impressed with yourself and I know it's going to open
up the door for you to try even more complicated recipes. Now I really hope
you enjoyed this recipe tutorial and if you did make sure you give it a thumbs
up. If you aren't already subscribed make sure you hit that subscription button and
ring the notification bell so you never miss a video and if you're interested in
learning even more about working with yeast I actually have a fundamentals of
yeast breads course on my website which I will leave the link to in the
description box. Feel free to ask any questions you might have in the comment
section and I would be happy to answer those for you and I will be back next
week with another recipe tutorial. I'll see you then!