Bringing the bakery home: Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread, by Gourmed

 The greatness of bread lies in the humble raw materials used and the extraordinary
way they transform into what is the symbol of food, even life. Bread is the epitome of what happens in
all recipes. We use ingredients that independent of each other don’t seem to have great potential of
transforming into something else and by the end of the cooking process we have a result that is a lot
more than a simple sum of its parts.
This particular recipe demonstrates the above. With very little effort, by mixing flour, yeast and water
and leaving the rest up to time you get a great loaf of bread. True, it does take a lot of time, between 12-
20 hours, but one needs do nothing more.
After that, what matters is how one treats the dough and what the temperatures of the oven are. You
need speed, tenderness, high temperatures, care and softness.
Food Impressions: The result is a bread of quality you would buy from a bakery, meaning that is a regular
loaf with a golden crunchy crust, and a soft absorbing crumb.
It does not crumble to pieces as most home made breads do.
It’s the bread you can’t wait to taste after you take it out of the oven, the bread you want to eat for
breakfast, for supper and dinner.
It’s country style bread, but smells like sourdough.
Price per person: priceless (0,60€)

Anyone can make this bread, even if they don’t have much experience in the kitchen.
You should leave behind all your fears and inhibitions and enter the kitchen -it won’t last long- you
won’t need any machinery, any bread makers or mixers, you won’t even need to tire yourself and your
arms with kneading. It’s simple and revolutionary. But as far as revolutions go, it needs time.
You can find the recipe on www.gourmed.com.
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Bringing the bakery home: Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread, by Gourmed

Jim Lahey baked bread for the first time to impress a girl, while he was still a student in Art college. Nobody
ever knew what happened with the girl, but after that, Jim travelled to Italy, and returned often to
Rome and Tuscany to learn all the secrets of bread making from the experienced Italian bakers.
He was astonished by the simple procedure that can result in a divine loaf.
After that he opened Sullivan Street Bakery, with breads and sandwiches (!) which the crowd and the
critics absolutely loved.
Now Sullivan Str. bakery is on 47th St. in Hell’s Kitchen and continues to impress with old and new techniques.
His most recent child (apart from his 3 children that Jim adores) is his pizza place, Co. ( which comes
from con-pane, with bread, people who share their bread) which is a very stylish, simple space in Chelsea;
as a famous American food site noted “more of a bread bar, than a pizza parlor”.
Jim Lahey makes bread for food tastings, food events, and happenings taking place frequently in Manhattan
and Brooklyn. It must be noted that he serves it strictly with Greek olive oil and sea salt.