No-Eat Bread

I'm sure you've heard of No-Knead Bread. This revolutionary new baking method was the brainchild New York Times, and I proceeded to fail miserably at it. I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but my attempt at bread ended up the size of a small salad plate. The crust was the texture of cement, while the crumb was the texture of warm, sweaty Play-Doh.

Eat me, I dare you.

of Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery. Mark Bittman updated the method for the

What went wrong? Well, firstly, I have a tendency to have two different tabs open on my browser at the same time. This was the case when I was trying to bake the bread; I had the above-linked recipe open as well as this one. (Is the second recipe even No-Knead Bread? I don't think so.)

The second recipe specified that I must fold the dough. Unfortunately, I don't know what that is, or how to do that. Belatedly, I perused some Chow.com threads...

Anyway, the third problem was that I was trying out another soon-to-be-ill-fated slow cooker recipe. I accidentally placed utensils and a small cookbook over the "rising" dough. Realizing that this was probably a big no-no, I attempted to rise the bread again.

The final fiasco happened inside the oven. The recipe (or some recipe, because at this point I had forgotten which recipe or message board I was supposed to be reading), directed me to cover the  bread inside the oven for the first half-hour in order to promote rising. The final half-hour, I was supposed to uncover the bread to then promote browning. You guessed it... I transposed the directions, uncovering for the first half-hour and then covering for the last half-hour.

The results are above!