One of the easiest, and most nourishing ways to prevent food waste at home is to use extra vegetables, cooked pasta or grains, and other leftovers in hearty, comforting soups. And what turns a simple homemade soup into a full meal better than homemade bread?

Who has time for homemade bread? Well, if you have about 5 minutes… you do! Ok, so it needs more than 5 minutes with the rising and baking, but minutes, when you are actually working, are next to nothing.

This insanely easy bread recipe makes the rounds of online recipe communities every so often and was even once featured in the New York Times. It requires no time-consuming kneading, only four basic ingredients and produces a very rustic loaf filled with big air pockets, kind of like ciabatta, and surrounded by a crunchy crust that makes for excellent soup-dipping.

The catch? After you mix the ingredients, the dough has to sit for 12-24 hours, so you need to plan ahead for this. If you want to make it for dinner, we’ve found the best strategy is to mix the ingredients the night before so it’s ready to bake by the following afternoon or early evening. We’ve also tried prepping the dough first thing in the morning and baking it later in the afternoon. It works if you can leave the dough in a warm spot so it rises a bit faster. Otherwise, it won’t rise enough and you’ll end up with a very dense bread.

Ready for your kitchen to smell like heaven?

Ingredients

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 ½ teaspoons salt (don’t skip this, trust us!)
• ½ teaspoon active dry yeast*
• 1 ½ cups water, room temperature (not cold!)

*If you already have traditional yeast, no need to buy active! You can substitute traditional by increasing the yeast measurement by 25%. In this case, you would use ½ + ⅛ teaspoons of traditional dry yeast.

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl. Put those superhero arms to work and make sure it’s well combined. 
2. Cover bowl with plastic wrap or, preferably, a reusable silicone or another tight-fitting lid (you want a good seal to get a little fermentation going).
3. Let sit at room temperature for 12-24 hours.*
4. When you’re ready to bake, heat oven to 450°.
5. Put a large dutch oven or oven-safe pot with a lid in the oven while it’s heating & set a timer for 30 minutes. You want that pot to get nice and hot.
6. Turn dough out onto a floured surface.
7. Gently shape it into a sort-of-ball (this is rustic, so it really just needs to be in one cohesive blob, nothing fancy) and cover with a dusting of flour.
8. Move dough blob onto a piece of parchment paper.
9. When the pot is well heated, carefully remove it from the oven and transfer the dough blob to the pot with the parchment paper! Parchment should be under the dough.
10. Cover the pot with the heated oven-safe lid and return to the oven for 35 minutes.
11. Remove the cover and bake for another 10 minutes until the top is golden brown.**
12. Remove from oven and restrain yourself from consuming immediately and burning your mouth and hands on your picture-perfect ball of absolute heaven!

*As mentioned earlier, you can speed this up a little by keeping the dough in a warm spot like a sunny window or warm (not hot!) oven.

**For a crispier, cracker-like crust, bake covered for 30 minutes and uncovered for 15 minutes.

Have you tried this recipe? What's great about this recipe is you can add anything to it! Use up over-ripe fruits to make fruit explosion bread, add wilting herbs like rosemary for a savoury loaf - the possibilities are endless!