Overnight Artisan Bread recipe topped with Watercress and egg salad

   All three of my boys can cook well. But my middle son is amazingly innovative. He works at a restaurant, where he most often has to go by their menu of recipes. But frequently he is called to the forefront to invent the night's special. Why? Because he can put an ingenious spin on things that become so common to your mind that you can no longer think of new ways to prepare them. He is the one to taste and say, "I think it needs nutmeg." Nutmeg? You are skeptical, but give it a try. Genius! 
   On this particular occasion he was playing about with some extra cooked chicken and made up a fantastic egg salad. He just so happened to bring a bowl home to his mummy. To say it was good is an understatement. He doesn't like mayonnaise and so he used sour cream, shredded cheddar (?!), relish, and a million different ingredients that I nodded at while stuffing it into my mouth.
   The greatest part was that there was some leftover after my sampling. With this in mind I made Overnight Artisan Bread so that I could have an open-faced sandwich for lunch the next day. I had just been thinking about the gorgeous green mounds of watercress adorning the spring and creek. My great-granny and Aunt Jane used to love it on egg salad sandwiches. 
    My plan in place, I started the dough right before going to bed. This is the most fantastic, forgiving, a-baboon-could-make-it kind of bread. Honestly, you will be bowled over. Now, there are a million recipes for this kind of no-knead bread out there. I found one that had the least ingredients and that I liked her style of explaining things. I found it here- https://www.simplysogood.com/crusty-bread/ . After I made it a time or two I added my own little twists.

Mix in a large bowl: 
3 cups plain white flour
1 and 3/4 tsp Kosher salt
1/2 tsp Instant or Rapid-rise yeast. 

This is her recipe, and yet I have used regular bread machine yeast with equal results. I'm certain you could use regular salt if that is what you had. 

Now, pour 1 and 1/2 cups water over this. It doesn't have to be warm, but I wouldn't use stone-cold. Mix with a spoon till all the flour is incorporated in a shaggy looking mess.

 Perfect! Cover it with cling wrap and drift off to sleep in the knowledge that the bread dough fairies will be doing all the work while you snooze.
   When you wake the next morning you will have a risen dough, just don't expect it to be huge like a normal yeast rise. I deviate from her recipe some after this. Instead of wasting the cling wrap over the bowl, I place it with the wet side down on the counter. The underneath will have become damp with humidity from the rising dough. Onto the dry side you will generously scatter flour and then use your fingers like claws to rake out the dough onto the wrap. This keeps you from having to dirty a second bowl, and when you are through, you fold up the cling wrap with flour on it and throw in the trash. Voila!
   Now form the dough into a ball. The way to do this is to take the opposite sides and pull toward each other and then pinch to connect. Do this to the other two sides. Continue to pull opposing sides together and pinch closed until the sides look smooth. Grab onto the knot of pinched together dough, slide the other hand underneath the dough and flip over. Now the nice smooth side that your pulling created is on the top. Cover this with a cloth and let rest. 

Pulling the opposite sides together and pinching

  Now you need to pick your pot of choice to cook the bread in. Most recipes suggest a cast iron dutch oven. If you have ever pined over a $400 Le Creuset enameled pot and then fallen into despair at the unattainableness, sorrow no longer. If you don't have to have the designer label your life will be much easier. In clothes, cooking, and all aspects. This gorgeous blue enameled cast iron pot cost me $29.99 at Aldi several years ago. I adore it! However, you don't have to have cast iron. I wanted to make two loaves and so I put the second batch of dough in a very thin walled graniteware pot with a lid. You can also use a glass cooking dish, as long as it has a tight lid.

    Heat the oven to 400 degrees and stick in your pot with the lid on. Time for thirty minutes. In this amount of time the oven will heat, the pot will come to temperature at the same time, and the dough will rise.

    Again, the dough will not be huge, like some recipes. After having risen for the 30 minutes my dough was 2 1/2 to 3 inches tall, and about 7 inches round. When your pot has heated for the full time, pick up your dough and drop it in the pot. Take care not to let your hands touch the sides as it is now 400 degrees! It doesn't make any difference if you make it land right side up, or tip it over.
    Stick the lidded pot back into the oven and cook the dough 30 minutes. Then remove the lid and cook 15 minutes more to crust the loaf well. 

    The cooking time allowed me to run down to the spring and harvest my handfuls of watercress. Cress comes up in very early spring and as the weather gets hotter, so does the cress. The heat is a black peppery kind of taste, not a bitter greens kind of hot. It is very fresh and vegative tasting. It purees beautifully with a bit of olive oil and salt so you can drizzle vibrant green splashes into a soup or stew.
    When the bread is done I use two wooden spoons to lever the loaves out onto a cooling rack. They will be golden brown and crusty with leftover flour. They look just like those Artisan loaves you can buy in a fancy store. Except for the fact that you just made it yourself! 

The thin walled graniteware and the heavy cast iron cooked up equally golden and crusty

    "How can a nation be called great if it's bread tastes like Kleenex?" ~Julia Child

   Oh, Julia, how I love her! This is not your pasty, tasteless white bread. This bread is amazing. It makes me think a bit of ciabatta. It is light inside, filled with gorgeous air-holes, with a crackling crust and a chew that makes you sink your teeth in and rip off a chunk like a bread devouring beast! Seriously. Try it and you'll understand. With egg salad and watercress, or just slathered with butter while hot, this bread is dead simple and deadly delicious!

"All sorrows are lessened with bread."

 ~ Miguel de Cevantes Saavedra