Grant Crilly is the Executive Director and cofounder of ChefSteps. Grant is a classically trained chef and, prior to ChefSteps, he worked on the award-winning cookbook series Modernist Cuisine and cooked at various restaurants, including L’Astrance in Paris, Busaba in Mumbai, and Mistral Kitchen in Seattle.

Grant Crilly

This is the technique you should use to achieve a country bread full of flavor, with an airy crumb and crisp crust, in less than one day. Once you make this no-knead bread, you are going to want to make more. Jim Lahey’s method is solid since it is based on trial and error in his bakery. This technique delivers. (That’s why everyone and their friends have a version of it on their blogs.) I have changed a few small things in my kitchen, but this is really Lahey’s no-knead technique. One of the tricks of this bread recipe? Use more yeast than you think. Some recipe developers pride themselves on using little to no yeast in a bread. However, I prefer the flavor of a very yeasty bread, since yeast adds umami flavor to the bread. More yeast equals a bit of sweet-salty aroma and a savory, nutty flavor. Even the yeast that dies off in the bake adds some pungent umami-ethanol qualities that I really love as well. I didn’t get fancy with scoring in this recipe. That’s because I do not let the dough sit in the banneton for long. Since the dough is fresher than traditional bread dough, there is enough moisture in the crust to allow it to expand more evenly without the use of scoring. Get baking!

French Country Bread in One Day