Man cannot live on bread alone. He needs booze too.

Here we have something I haven't made much of before: BREAD. I wanted the simplest bread I could find. I didn't want to have to knead it, worry about it burning, etc. I mean I will bake more bread properly, I promise. Just let me do this my way this time. I mean my molasses soda bread was pretty yummy.

As my M.O. has been as of late, I pulled out my Crockpot to make this happen. Here is what I found on Instructables with photos and step by step by step instructions. It made me feel like I could really really do it.

No Knead Crockpot Bread 

Ingredients:

1/4 teaspoon Active Dry Yeast

1&1/2 teaspoons of Salt

1&1/2 cups warm water

3+ cups flour (all-purpose, unbleached natural white)

Method

Combine the ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

Start with the warm water, and add the yeast to it. Stir.

Add flour a cup at a time and mix. Add in the salt as you are doing this. Once you get in 3 cups of flour, keeping adding more flour in small amounts and mixing until the dough no longer sticks to the side of the mixing bowl. This might be an entire cup or more of flour.

Sprinkle a little flour over the top of the dough, then cover it with plastic wrap, and set out-of-the-way for 8 to 12 hours. I usually prepare the dough the night before I need it, and bake it the next day.

Dust your kitchen table with flour.

Dump the dough out onto it and roll around a bit. Shape the dough into a ball.

Line a bowl with parchment paper, and put the dough in it. Leave the dough for 2 hours to rise.

Plug in your Crock-Pot and set it to HIGH.

Allow it to preheat. The stoneware should get quite warm.

Once it's preheated, lift the dough by the parchment paper and transfer the dough and paper into the Crock-Pot.

Put the lid on.

Bake for 1 hour.

Check the loaf. The whole Crock-Pot should be somewhat steamy. Feel free to shake the hot water off the lid into your sink when you remove the lid to look inside. The loaf is baked as much by steaming as by direct heat, but you don't want the steam condensing, and getting the bread damp.

You will see that the top should be almost rubbery. It will NOT be crisp and brown.

Crock-Pots heat AT THE SIDES. You may notice nice color at the SIDES of the loaf if you pull it out, and that the bottom is par-baked but NOT browned or toasty.

Slow-cookers come in different power ratings. Yours may bake faster or slower than mine. Check your slow cooker every half-hour or so the first time you make this recipe, to get a sense of your slow-cooker.

Bake for another thirty minutes to an hour.

Bake time can be two to four hours total, depending on your Crock-Pot, its power, insulating the pot, etc. In this Instructable, think of times as only a general guide.

Now, flip the bread over.

WHAT!?!? Yep, you heard me right, flip it over. Because a Crock-Pot does NOT heat in the same way a typical oven does, the bread gets physically flipped upside down to bake evenly.

Only flip the bread after it's about three-quarters of the way baked. You've flipped pancakes, right? The trick with those is not to flip too soon. The same with Crock-Pot-Bread. Flip it after the top is set.

Bake another 30 or more minutes until baked.

Bread is finished when it sounds hollow when thumped and smells like bread.

Remove the bread from the pot and let cool.

Slice the bread with a serrated knife, electric carving knife, or old-school electric meat slicer.

You can store this bread in a plastic bag for no more than about three days. Without commercial preservatives, home-baked bread will either dry out or go moldy in just a few days. Fortunately, it always gets completely eaten right away, usually within minutes.

This turned out kinda blah. The texture was perfect as was the density. Maybe I forgot to add the salt completely because it was certainly lacking the zing and pizaz I was hoping to taste. If I make it again, I would add either more salt and or molasses.

Whelp...Until the next loaf...

**Today's title comes from Theodore P Stein...no, I don't know why he is important. I will Wikipedia it for you though...yup, still nothing. Meh, I still like the quote, so I will leave it.**