No Knead Peasant Bread

INGREDIENTS

• 4 cups (512 g) unbleached all-purpose or bread flour
  
• 2 teaspoons (10 g) kosher salt
  
• 2 cups (454 g) lukewarm water (made by mixing
• 1.5 cups cold water with 0.5 cup boiling water)
  
• 2 teaspoons (8 g) sugar
  
• 2 teaspoons (8 g) instant yeast
  
• room temperature butter, about 2 tablespoons

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, sugar, and instant yeast.
2. Add the water. Mix until the flour is absorbed.
   
3. Let it rise. Cover bowl with a tea towel or plastic wrap and set aside in a warm spot to rise for at least an hour. (In the winter or if you are letting the bread rise in a cool place, it might take as long as two hours to rise.)  TIP to create a slightly warm spot in your oven for your bread to rise in: Turn the oven on at any temperature (350ºF or so) and let it pre-heat for one minute, just to raise the temperature a bit then turn it off. Do not allow the oven to fully heat up, you just want the pre-heat to run a minute. 
   
4. If you used your oven for rising, remove the dough, the preheat the oven to 425ºF.
5. Grease two 1-qt or 1.5-qt oven-safe bowls with about a tablespoon of butter each.
6. Using two forks, punch down your dough, scraping it from the sides of the bowl, which it will be clinging to. As you scrape it down try to pull the dough toward the center. You want to loosen the dough entirely from the sides of the bowl, and you want to make sure you’ve punched it down.
7. Then, take your two forks and divide the dough into two equal portions — eye the center of the mass of dough, and starting from the center and working out, pull the dough apart with the two forks.
8. Then scoop up each half and place into your prepared bowls. This part can be a little messy — the dough is very wet and will slip all over the place. Using forks with short tines, makes this easier — my small salad forks work best; my dinner forks make it harder. It’s best to scoop it up fast and plop it in the bowl in one fell swoop. Some people like to use flexible, plastic dough scrapers for this step.
   
9. Let the dough rise again without covering for about 20 to 30 minutes on the countertop near the oven (or near a warm spot…do not use inside the oven). The loaves are ready once they have risen to just above the rims of your 1 qt bowls or just below the rims if you used a 1.5 qt bowls 
10. Bake for 15 minutes.
11. Then reduce the heat to 375º and bake for 15 to 17 minutes longer.
12. Remove from the oven and turn the loaves onto cooling racks. If you’ve greased the bowls well, the loaves should fall right out onto the cooling racks. If the loaves look a little pale and soft when you’ve turned them out onto your cooling racks, place the loaves into the oven directly on the racks (without their bowls) to bake for about 5 minutes longer.
13. Remove from oven onto cooling racks to cool for 10 minutes before cutting.