The home-baked bread of my dreams has a deep brown, shatteringly crisp crust, a chewy center with a texture resembling a sea sponge, and an intoxicating aroma. Who would have thought I'd be pulling it out of the oven on a work night?

After more than a month of baking out of "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" (Thomas Dunne Books, 2007, 242 pp., $27.95), I'm an enthusiastic convert to the no-knead revolution led by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François. Terrific homemade bread no longer means hours devoted to kneading dough, letting it rise, punching it down and letting it rise again before putting it in an oven. Instead, a very wet dough is stirred together, allowed to rise and then stashed in the refrigerator for later baking.

It's not really instant, as the title implies, but it does require very little hands-on effort.

The technique isn't altogether new. Many European breads traditionally have been based on wet sponge starters and long, slow rises. Sonoma baker Peter Reinhart reintroduced the concept to many bakers in his seminal cookbook, "Brother Juniper's Bread Book" (Aris Books) in 1990. Like Julia Child before him, Reinhart discussed the benefits of doing the final rise overnight in the refrigerator, a process that allows the dough time to develop more flavor from fermentation.

Fast forward to fall 2006, when Mark Bittman shook the world of amateur bakers by introducing a no-knead loaf to readers of the New York Times. Adapting the techniques of baker Jim Lahey of Brooklyn's Sullivan Street Bakery, Bittman outlined a recipe that called for quickly mixing together a very wet dough and letting it rise unattended for 18 hours before shaping it into a loaf, letting it rise two hours more and baking it off.

I loved that bread. Baked in a preheated cast-iron casserole, it had a great crust and a lovely interior pocketed with large, irregular holes. Still, it required a lot of advance planning. To get a loaf for dinner, I'd have to start stirring the dough together around 8 the previous evening and be home in midafternoon to shape it and let it rise again. It was a weekend project only.

By the time the Bittman article was published. Hertzberg had been experimenting with easier ways to make a good homemade loaf of bread for several years. A physician and president of a medical information systems consulting firm in Minneapolis, he was obsessed with the idea of developing a dough that could sit in the refrigerator for up to two weeks before baking.

"I just carried it to the extreme that traditional bakers would have rejected," Hertz-berg said in a phone interview from Arizona, where he and co-author François had been teaching a class on their unusual technique.

"It was trial and error, and pulling together ideas that wouldn't have been pulled together by traditional bakers who had to face their peers."

François, who studied at the Culinary Institute of America and has built a reputation as a Minneapolis pastry chef, wasn't sure what to make of Hertzberg's recipe when he asked her to check it out.

"It looked very, very different than anything I had ever seen before and, really, I was skeptical about what kind of quality you would get," she recalled. "Honestly, the first loaf surprised me. By the fourth loaf I baked out of it, I was pretty hysterical about it."

She has plenty of company. Even hard-core bakers, who toss around professional terms like "hydration ratios" and "oven spring," have been smitten by the master recipe, which produces enough dough for four one-pound loaves.

The foodie Web site,, has been buzzing about the basic recipe since January, with enthusiasts posting color photos of their just-baked loaves. François has joined the discussion, offering advice to forum participants.

The book is a bestseller, with 50,000 copies in print and a reprinting scheduled. lists it as the No. 1 bread-baking book, and Jessica's Biscuit, a popular online cookbook store, ranked the Hertzberg and François volume among its top five sellers in all categories last week, four months after the release date.

The "five minutes a day" in the title refers to active time required to prepare the dough for baking, not including rising and baking. And it's not far off.

The book is designed for people who love bread but don't really know that much about baking. Hertzberg and François describe their techniques in great detail, avoiding all jargon and providing plenty of how-to photos along the way. The biggest challenge I encountered was finding enough refrigerator space for the five-quart plastic container.

The recipe is amazingly forgiving. I've slashed the top of the bread too early, forgotten to add hot water to the oven pan and even baked it without giving it adequate time to rise after I formed the loaf. It's always been a hit at my house. Of course, the bread is even better when the instructions are followed to the letter.

Once you've stirred together a big batch of dough, you have the makings of four boules, or free-form round loaves, waiting in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. The bread is perfectly acceptable when made after the first rise, but it develops more character and flavor from slow fermentation when it chills for a week or more. Toward the end of its 14-day lifespan, though, the dough may lose some of its leavening power.

The authors also offer a number of variations, including an olive oil dough that makes a great pizza and doughs enriched with eggs and butter for challah, brioche and sticky rolls. The fougasse, a traditional French flat bread with decorative slits, makes an impressive statement with very little effort.

In all, the cookbook offers nearly 100 recipes - enough to keep me busy for months to come.

Contact Aleta Watson at or (408) 920-5032.