The Easiest Bread Recipe You’ll Ever Bake

No kneading. No dough hook. Just a bottle of beer and a few pantry ingredients and your home will be suffused in the comforting aroma of freshly baked bread.

Wait, beer? Yes! It’s the secret ingredient in this crusty loaf which takes just 10 minutes of active cooking time to make. Half Baked Harvest‘s Tieghan Gerard shared this recipe with us from her new cookbook, Half Baked Harvest Super Simple. She uses the recipe often, sometimes employing it as the dough for a stunning Rosemary Potato and Wild Mushroom Burrata Pizza—currently the dish up next on our what-to-make-for-weekend-lunch list.

The dough is soft and bubbly. Once it rises, you need only transfer it to a well-floured board and do your best to shape it into a round. We suggest using a bench scraper to lift the edges of the dough over the center before flipping it over onto a piece of parchment paper for baking. A preheated Dutch oven in a hot oven does the rest.

No-Knead Bread and Pizza Dough

MAKES: 1 POUND OF DOUGH
PREP TIME: 10 minutes
RESTING TIME: 2 hours or overnight
COOK TIME: 45 minutes
TOTAL TIME: 55 minutes, plus resting time

• 3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more as needed (see Note)
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 (12-ounce) beer
• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, yeast, and salt. Add the beer and olive oil and mix with a wooden spoon until combined. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature until doubled in size, 1 to 2 hours.

TO BAKE AS BREAD

1. When ready to bake, place a 6-quart cast-iron Dutch oven or heavy pot on a rack positioned in the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 450˚F. Once it reaches temperature, let the Dutch oven warm for 30 minutes.
2. Turn the dough out onto a generously floured work surface. Using your hands, form the dough into a ball and place it on a large piece of parchment paper.
3. Carefully remove the Dutch oven from the oven and place the dough with the parchment paper in the center of it. Transfer the pot back to the oven, cover, and bake for 30 minutes. Carefully remove the lid and continue cooking until the bread is a deep golden brown, about 15 minutes more.
4. Carefully lift the bread out of the pot and place it on a rack to cool completely, about 2 hours. (Don’t slice the bread right out of the oven—you want to let it continue to cook as it cools.)

TO USE AS PIZZA DOUGH 

Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and divide it into 2 equal pieces. Use half of the dough as directed in any given pizza recipe and save the remaining dough, wrapped in plastic wrap, for another use.

Note: To get the right consistency in your dough, start with your base amount of flour, then add more as needed, 1 tablespoon at a time, until the dough is smooth but not dry. It’s better to have a dough that’s on the slightly sticky side than a dough that’s too dry. The dough should be a bit loose; it should not feel dense or heavy.