No-Knead Hungarian Pantry Bread

It's January. (Happy 2012!) I wish I could say it's cold out, but it's not - feels like a warm spring afternoon around here, thanks global warming! - so I've got no real reason to be baking bread other than these: a) it makes the apartment smell good; b) it's cheaper than the good bread from the co-op; and c) oh, right, it's also delicious. Also baking my own bread makes me feel badass. Come to think of it, those are some damn good reasons, so there. My recipe of the moment I'm calling Hungarian Pantry Bread. It has nothing to do with Hungary, other than I got it from my friend Nicole, who got it from her father, who's Hungarian. "Pantry" is because I put in it whatever seeds and things I happen to have in my pantry. I stick to the milder, less-ethnically-affiliated seeds, since I'm aiming for an all-purpose kind of bread, but fennel or cumin or whatever other herbs or spices you've got around would probably be delicious too, if less versatile. Lately the mix has included: Quaker oats, caraway, kalonji (onion) seeds, flax seeds, quinoa, wheat germ, green wheat, sesame, poppy, and some things that look kind of like broken rice grains that my subletters left behind, no idea what they actually are. I use roughly a tablespoon or two of each kind, more of the things I really like (caraway) and less of the ones I'm just trying to use up (mystery grains). It's a long process to make, but most of that is waiting rather than actually doing anything, so I still call it easy. Here goes:

No-Knead Hungarian Pantry Bread

4 1/3 cups flour (I use 1/3 cup buckwheat flour, because I can.)

2 1/4 cups of lukewarm water

1 tablespoon of kosher or coarse salt

1 tablespoon of dry yeast

Seeds

Put everything in a container with a lid. The container should be big enough that there is room for the dough to rise. With a wooden spoon mix the ingredients until just mixed more or less evenly. This should just take a couple of minutes. Don’t knead! You’ll get a kind of ‘rough’ dough.

Let it stand for 2 or 2.5 hrs, with lid on, but not airtight, until the dough rises. Put on lid firmly, and put in fridge.

The next day (or later):

Get a board, sprinkle with corn flour/meal. Take out dough from fridge. Put flour on hands, (can sprinkle a little on the dough), and take the dough out of the plastic container. With your hands, form it into a rough square, and fold each edge under until they sort of meet in the middle underneath.

Put ball of dough on board, sprinkle with a little flour, cover with a light cotton dishtowel, and let it warm up and rise for 2 hrs.

Put dutch oven in oven, heat to 450F.

With serrated bread knife, make 2-3 cuts (about 1/4” deep on top of dough.)

Take hot dutch oven out of oven, put in dough.

Put lid on, put back into oven, and bake for 30 mins.

Take lid off, and continue to bake for another 30 mins.

Take out of the oven, put bread on a board, and let cool. Eat.