Make some bread tomorrow. You don't need to knead anything. The ancient Egyptians used bread as a form of currency and they had a workforce of thousands that were paid exclusively in bread—do you think they screwed around with kneading?
Hell naw. They threw a bunch of flour and water in a trough and hacked at it with their hoes till it formed a gooey slop. After a few hours, the slop would start bubbling from all the yeast that was growing in the trough and then they'd scrape it onto a slab of pottery to bake.
How to make your own staff of life:
Plan to do this 15 hours in advance.
You will need:
- an oven
- a bowl
- plastic wrap
- a heavy oven-proof pot (8" diameter is what I use) with a lid (cast iron if you've got it)
- 3 cups of flour
- 1.5 cups of water
- a dash of salt
- 1/4 teaspoon of yeast
Add all of the bolded ingredients to your bowl, adding the water last. Hack at it with a spoon or spatula until well-mixed. The dough will be extremely sticky. Cover it tightly with plastic wrap and let it rise for about 14 hours (it is worth the wait).
Now your dough should look like a giant sponge. Hack at it with a spoon or spatula until you deflate it a bit. Now put your pot in the oven at 450º F (230º C) for 30 mins. to heat up. Take the pot out of the oven, pour your dough into the pot, put the lid on, and place the pot back inside the oven to bake at the same temperature for 30-40 minutes. Because the steam from the dough-slop can't escape from the pot, you will get a crackly crust like you wouldn't believe. Professional bakers have expensive steam-injected ovens that create the same environment.
The bread shouldn't stick if the pot is hot enough to start with. If you are still worried, throw some cornmeal in the bottom for insurance. Some of the cornmeal will burn into carbon, but that is more or less what happens to the bottom of your crust anyway.
This recipe has been going around the internet as if the idea of two parts flour to one part water is some kind of revolution. This recipe is not a revolution, but if you want, you can think about it as money in the bank.
Update for FAQs:
If you have a pot 10" or larger you will get flatter looking loaves if you use the same amount of ingredients. Try incrementing the recipe keeping the same proportions until you find what works. You might need to bake for a bit longer if you do this. This is a very flexible recipe and I don't even use measuring cups normally. I just try to hit 2 flour/1 water. If you use a different system of units, try experimenting! If you are curious about the conversion though, here are the metric conversions I found for 3 cups: .71 liters and .3 kg. If you weigh by pounds, use .66 lbs of flour.
Message me if you have more questions.