Category: General

Recipe from Jim Lahey
Adapted by Sam Sifton
Updated April 28, 2020

Melina Hammer for The New York Times
Total Time
12 to 24 hours
Rating
4(2,700)

So you’ve brought a sourdough starter to life, or received one as a gift, or purchased one somewhere. You’ve fed it and watched it become bubbly and fragrant, with a light yeasty-boozy scent. Now it’s time to bake bread.

An easy way to start is with this adaptation of baker Jim Lahey’s storied recipe for no-knead bread, replacing commercial yeast with a little less than three-quarters of a cup of healthy, well-fed sourdough starter.

Give the resulting dough a long, long rise and then plop it into a hot, enameled cast-iron pot with a lid. You’ll have an incredible loaf within the hour, and may well find yourself addicted to the smell, the taste, and the process alike.

Ingredients
Yield:1 loaf
3½cups/475 grams bread flour, plus more for dusting
1 1.2 300 grams (about 1¼ cups) filtered water
1 teaspoon/6 grams kosher salt

¾cup/180 grams sourdough starter, “fed.”
(optional)

2 tablespoons/20 grams sesame seeds

1 teaspoon Vital Wheat Gluten

1 teaspoon diastatic malt powder

Optional toppings :
2 tablespoons/20 grams sesame seeds
or 2 tablespoons wheat bran to top.

Preparation
Step 1
In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour and salt.

Step 2
In a small mixing bowl, stir together 300 grams (about 1¼ cups) lukewarm tap water with the sourdough starter, then pour the mixture into the bowl with the flour mixture. Mix until just combined. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a tea towel and leave it to rise overnight, about 10 to 24 hours. (I usually pop this in an empty microwave for about 18 hours, where it is kept draft-free and out of the way.)

Step 3
The next day, generously dust a clean kitchen surface with flour. The dough should have risen considerably, and you should see visible bubbling along the sides. The dough will be spongy and wet. Scoop the dough directly onto the surface, then dust with more flour (I use white rice flour) . With lightly floured hands, gently fold the edges of the dough from the outside in, to form a round loaf. Dust a clean towel with yet more flour, sprinkle sesame seeds in a small area about the size of your loaf, and place the dough on top of the seeds or wheat bran, seam side down.

Lightly dust with additional flour, cover, and let rise until doubled in size, about 2 hours. (I put this in a flour-lined proofing basket that I have powdered with white rice flour to prevent sticking. )

Step 4
Meanwhile, heat the oven to 450. Place a covered enamel Dutch oven or heavy pot with a lid in the oven and let it heat for 30 minutes or so. Remove the pot from the oven, take off its top, and carefully invert the risen dough into it, so that the seam side is now facing up. (Alternately, you can invert the risen dough onto a flour-dusted sheet of parchment paper and lower your loaf into your pot that way.) Put the top back on the pot and return it to the oven.

Step 5
Bake for about 25 to 30 minutes, then take the top off the pot and allow it to continue to cook until it is brown and crusty all over, an additional 20 minutes or so. Put the loaf on a rack to cool for at least 30 minutes before serving.

1. Which industry is more corrupt than anyone’s ready to admit?

We know it is kind of corrupt (Trump, anyone?) but commercial real estate is hardly regulated and any existing regulations are rarely fully enforced.

2. What is an industry/profession that has a stellar deserved reputation?

Nursing. I don’t think this is at all controversial – nurses are angels.

3. How many languages do you speak? And what is your level in each?

Three:

English, incredibly fluent.
French, about as fluent as a fourth grader.
Latin, a total novice

Thanks to Duo-lingo.

4. What’s something from your childhood that kids today will never experience?

A television/media device with no remote control – and you to get up off you ass an go over to the television to change the channel.

5. What’s preventing you from fighting crime(in spandex) today?

It was really windy out today – that kept me inside. Today the criminals won because of my pollen allergies.

NYTimes 10/2/2025 on the occasion of the the publication of Pynchon’s new book: “Shadow Ticket?

LISA: Dad, did you read “Gravity’s Rainbow” yet, the Thomas Pynchon masterpiece? He’s what I want to be when I grow up — a famous literary recluse. Just imagine being speculated about by the most consequential people in the world: English literature grad students.

HOMER: Sweetie, I really wanted to read it. But you know I don’t like to read. My eyes get so tired going right, right, right, then, ugh … left. Plus from the title I thought “Gravity’s Rainbow” would be about Skittles. It didn’t seem to be, so I took a break about halfway through.

LISA: You made it halfway through the book?

HOMER: Halfway through the first line.

LISA: OK, I thought you might struggle with it, so I got you a pop-up version too.

HOMER: Sorry, pop-up books are way too hard. If something’s going to pop up at me it better be from a toaster. Plus you have to figure out how to get the pages to lie back down flat again. I’m no engineer.

LISA: I thought you were a nuclear engineer.

HOMER: That’s more about pushing buttons. Or not pushing buttons. I can’t remember which. So if you had to choose a passage from the book to appear in The New York Times, what would it be?

LISA: It would have to be this quote about power in America: “All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few …”

HOMER: Interesting. Did you know there’s a green Skittle? Do you think this Pynchon guy knows what it tastes like?

LISA: Another great conversation, Dad.

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