Casa Valiente · Dutch-oven crusty loaf, scheduled to your kitchen
Daytime bake — a warmer room (~24 °C) and a touch more yeast drive a single ~6 h bulk. Mix in the morning, bake in the afternoon. Crumb is a little tighter than the long overnight versions.
Out of the oven at Tue 01:20
No-Knead Crusty Loaf
1 loaf/loaves • 72% hydration • 6 h bulk @ 24 °C
Bread flour (strong)
400 g
100%
Water (cool tap)
288 g
72%
Salt (fine sea salt)
8.0 g
2.0%
Instant dry yeast
1.1 g
0.284%
Total dough
697 g
Daytime bake — a warmer room (~24 °C) and a touch more yeast drive a single ~6 h bulk. Mix in the morning, bake in the afternoon. Crumb is a little tighter than the long overnight versions.
📋 Instructions (numbers match the schedule)
Mix — no kneading — In a big bowl stir the flour, salt and yeast together, then add the water. Stir with a spoon or wet hand just until no dry flour remains and it forms a shaggy, sticky mass — do not knead. Cover the bowl.
One fold (optional but worth it) — About 36 min in, with a wet hand reach under one side, stretch it up and fold it over the top; rotate the bowl and repeat 3–4 times. This builds strength the kneading would have. Cover again.
Long bulk rise (covered) — Leave the covered bowl at room temperature until the end of the bulk below. It's ready when the surface is domed and bubbly and the dough has roughly doubled and looks slack. Don't rush this — the long rise is what replaces kneading.
Shape on a floured surface — Tip the dough onto a well-floured surface — it will be loose. With floured hands fold the edges into the centre to make a rough round, then flip seam-side down and tuck it into a taut ball. Set it seam-side up in a well-floured proofing basket or a tea-towel-lined bowl.
Bench rest + preheat the pot — Rest the shaped loaf ~30 min. Meanwhile put your covered Dutch oven (cast iron) into the oven and preheat to 240–250 °C for at least 30 min — the empty pot must be screaming hot.
Score & load — Turn the loaf out onto baking paper, seam-side down. Slash the top 1 cm deep with a sharp blade (a single curve or a cross). Lift it — paper and all — into the blistering-hot pot and put the lid on.
Bake — lid OFF — After 25 min covered, remove the lid and lower to 230 °C. The trapped steam has set the crust; now it colours. Bake a further ~20 min until deep golden-brown.
Done — cool before cutting — Internal temp should read ~96–99 °C. Cool on a rack at least 1 hour before slicing — the crumb is still setting; cutting hot makes it gummy.
Equipment: a lidded cast-iron Dutch oven is what gives the bakery crust — it traps the loaf's own steam. No Dutch oven? Bake on a preheated stone/steel with a tray of boiling water on the floor of the oven for the first 20 min, then remove it. Crust: the deeper the colour, the better the flavour — don't pull it pale.
Yeast is a starting heuristic — your flour, room and tap water all shift timing. Calibrate on the first loaf.
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