Man cannot live by bread alone...

Says who? I decided to break free from the surly bonds of white bread and go it alone with something a bit more spicy! The No-Knead bread recipe that is sweeping the Nation just wasn't good enough for moi! I figured the worst thing that could happen is the results of my experimentation could either be used as frisbees or as gifts for people that I really don't like. To establish my starting point, here is the No-Knead Bread Recipe as published in the New York Times on November 8, 2006:

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt (although I use 1 tablespoon as it really improves taste)
1 5/8 cups of water (lukewarm)

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.
2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.
3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Lightly spray a piece of parchment paper with cooking oil (Pam, etc); put dough seam side down on parchment and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Place parchment paper with bread in it into the dutch oven. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Ok, back to your regularly scheduled programing. Using the above recipe as a starting point, I added 1 cup of sharp cheddar cheese, 1/4 cup finely chopped jalapeno (on a stick), 2 teaspoons dijon mustard (and yes, that is Grey Poupon), and 1/8 teaspoon cayenne peppa! (step 1 above)

After letting the dough rise overnight for about 16 hours, this is how it looked the next morning. (Step 2 above)

Scrape the dough out of the bowl onto a lightly floured surface. Fold the dough over about 1/2 of the way as if you were folding a business letter. Fold the other half over and then fold that in half. Gently shape the dough into a ball and place onto a large piece of parchment paper and then place back in the bowl. Lightly cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set in a warm place (70-80 degrees) for roughly 2 hours. The dough should rise to twice its size. (Step 3) After two hours, the dough should look somewhat like this:

You are now ready for step 4. Once oven and dutch oven are pre-heated as per above, pick up dough by the edges of the parchment paper and place in dutch oven. It is fine if the parchment paper sticks out from under the lid of the dutch oven. I found that I cook the bread with the lid on the dutch oven for 25 minutes at 450 degrees, then remove the lid for an additional 10-15 minutes until the bread is a dark golden brown color. Remove the bread and let cool on a bakers rack. Hopefully, if all went well, it should look something like this.

Add a bottle of wine and you've got more than a meal! Enjoy...

C