The Duo That Put No-Knead Bread on the Map Answers Your Baking Questions
Everything you’re trying to figure out about bread and pizza
Bread baking was transformed for the average home baker in 2006 when Mark Bittman wrote about Sullivan Street Bakery founder Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread in The New York Times after he learned about Lahey’s super-minimalist method.
“The method is surprisingly simple,” Lahey wrote in an email to Bittman. “I think a 4-year-old could master it — and the results are fantastic.”
People’s minds were blown. And the piece was a tipping point toward a renewed enthusiasm for baking bread at home. Before that, of course, there was Nancy Silverton’s La Brea. And Richard Bourdon’s Berkshire Mountain Bakery. And Peter Reinhardt’s works. And after it, bread-baking momentum took off, thanks to Bread Alone’s Daniel Leader and many others, along with Chad Robertson’s Tartine Bread in 2013, which ushered in a new era of bread geekdom. Along the way, there’s been new scrutiny of grain, an explosion of really great bakeries, and some eyerolling over the tech-bro embrace of bread.
As for Bittman, he went all-in with How to Bake Everything, released in 2016; these days, he’s really into whole-grain baking. And Lahey, of course, has become one of the most recognizable…
