My mother sent me a set of proofing baskets! Now I've got no excuse for not trying the no-knead bread recipe (link goes to recipe). From the Sullivan Street Bakery in NYC, comes two interesting suggestions: first, don't knead the dough, just leave it alone for a while (12+ hrs) and second, bake the bread in a covered pot. I can sympathize with the first suggestion: it has long seemed to me that the quality of the crumb (the size and shape of the bubbles of air) followed the amount of time I left the dough alone, whereas I never saw much of a difference from kneading. Kneading seemed much more crucial when the desired product needed to be elastic, say, for a strudel dough. As for the covered pot bit, the hive mind says that according to Elizabeth Davis, that notion can be traced to the ancient Greeks (see English Bread and Yeast Cookery). Makes sense, given the ancients' proficiency with earthenware. More to come; look for pictures of the final product.
3 cups flour; 1/4 tsp yeast, 1 1/4 tsp salt, 1 1/2 cup water. Mix dry ingredients, mix in water, pull together, let sit many hours. Pat with flour/wheat bran, fold dough over on itself, proof seam-side-down. Bake in a pre-heated pot @ 500 degrees for 30mins closed, then 15mins open. Or something like that....