Watch Kenji Make No-Knead Bread With Beer

Here are two things I have said in the past:

• Using baker’s percentages—that is, scaling all of your ingredients based on the amount of flour you start with‐combined with a scale is the fastest and easiest way to put together dough.
• My better no-knead bread recipe is practically foolproof.

Recently, I proved at least one of these two statements to be true when I (and my wife who has a PhD in math) completely bungled the baker's percentages as I prepared a loaf of bread with a camera strapped to my head. It didn't matter—the bread worked out just fine in the end anyway.

I made this video because friends of mine have commented on how wet their no-knead bread dough is, thinking that it may be a mistake. It's not! Dough should typically be wetter and stickier than folks who don't bake a lot think it should be. The trick is to work quickly and confidently. Let the dough know who's boss and that you won't abide misbehavior.

I know that because of the current situation, finding bread flour (or any flour) can be a bit tough at the moment, but if you've managed to score (or hoard) some, now is the perfect time to either try your hand at your first loaf, or to get back into the habit if you haven't baked in a while. The no-knead method makes it exceptionally easy. It takes all of 15 minutes of active time. Take a look at the video above for a full, real-time walkthrough of all the active parts of the process, check out the science behind how it works, or just jump straight to the recipe.