No knead bread is out of the oven. [...] They say 12 hours is find. I did about 14. Next time, I'm going to do the full 18.
For fellow bread-freaks: My kneadless bread rose like whoa over, let's see, I started it at 3pm and shaped it at 8am, so that is 15 hours. Could the room temp have been an issue?
I do think that kneaded bread has smaller holes, on average, so a better bread for sandwich consistency; kneadless bread also doesn't tolerate as much shaping as kneaded bread does, so you can't break it up into baguettes or 2 loaves or anything.
Kneadless Bread Recipe:
3 C all-purpose unbleached flour (up to 0.5 C whole wheat OK)
1/4 teaspoon yeast
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
1 5/8 C water
handful of cornmeal
Mix flour, yeast, salt and water in a large bowl. (Add any sugar or spices you want at this time; I add a little sugar to give the recipe some taste.) The mixture will be very sticky. Cover it with plastic wrap and put it someplace where it will stay at or above 70 F. for 12+ hours. (I put it under a lamp on my bedside table, or on the back burner of the stove.
After 12 hours, the top of the mixture will look like a clam beach at low tide: little air holes all over. Cover your hands with flour, turn out the sticky blob onto a floured work-surface, and make a ball out of it. (Let me repeat: use flour.) Take a clean dishtowel and scatter some cornmeal into it in the middle; plop the ball of dough into the cornmealed part, scatter more cornmeal on top, and fold the towel loosely back over the dough. Leave enough room for the dough to souble in size.
That sits for 1.5 hours, after which you turn the oven on. Oven = 450 F., and put your pan into it when you start. I use a 6-qt. Le Creuset pot with a top; just make sure it's a bin-shape with high-enough walls and a top that is oven-safe. The pot will get wicked hot after 30 minutes, so remove the pot (carefully) and gently roll the dough blob into the pot. Shake the pot a little bit to even out the dough; don't try to poke it and risk burning your hands.
Put the pot o' dough (with top on) into the oven for 20 minutes. (This gives the crust its hardness; the original recipe called for 30 minutes, but I found the crust too hard that way.) Remove the top, and bake for another 30-40 minutes -- so that the dough is in the oven less than an hour, or the crust is a nice brown (preferably both).
The recipe says the loaf is 1.5 lb., but all I can say is, it is a big round artisan loaf with a hard crust and spongy insides.