A crusty, comforting loaf of rustic bread in just one hour — really

I didn't want to get my heart broken again. I've been hurt too many times by bread. I've been hurt by starters that would never become sufficiently foamy, by doughs that sullenly refused to rise, by boules that baked into oversized hockey pucks.

As far as I'm concerned, one of the better things about our later pandemic era has been that it's become acceptable to go back to ignoring sourdough. Like everybody, I tried. And what I learned is that there is literally no way I can cultivate a jar of gray gloop with more nurturing attention than I've given most of my relationships. 

Yet I can't deny that there is an unmatched domestic pride that comes from presenting a fresh, crusty loaf of bread to the table, or that there are few better smells in the world than the wafting aroma of a beautiful loaf in the oven. 

At my most ambitious I can be an occasional and okay bread baker, pulling off soft, buttery sandwich loaves, or making Jim Lahey's idiot-proof no-knead bread when I manage the math of a project that requires at least one day's notice to pull off. But the main emotion of bread baking for me has always been a kind of suffocated, Ibsen drama-level panic. How can I live my life when I have this yeasty dough to watch over? What about my dreams, when I have this miche to feed? In an efficiency-obsessed world, the prospect of investing my time and energy into something that might temperamentally react to a kitchen that's too cold or water that's too warm is pretty anxiety-inducing. 

So what if we drastically slashed the whole housebound, waiting-around aspect of the experience? What if we amped up the recipe to all but guarantee a respectable rise? What if we baked a true blue loaf of crusty bread in about the time it takes to make the rest of dinner? Then it wouldn't be stressful. It wouldn't be scary. It'd be cool.

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"If you're a baker you should be instantly suspicious;" Kitchn writer Faith Durand admits in her recipe for "No-Time Bread," acknowledging that "Time is what generally makes bread good. We can't promise the incredible slow-rise flavor of no-knead bread here, but you can indeed trick yeast into a fast rise that gives a different but still delicious homemade loaf." When I first read the recipe, I was cautiously hopeful — a splash of balsamic vinegar and two quick rounds in the microwave seemed to offer the accelerated gist of a more leisurely offering, kind of like when you listen to a podcast on 1.5x speed.

I decided to improve my odds even further here, using rapid-rise yeast and swapping out water with a hoppy pale ale. I also used all-purpose flour instead of Durand's recommended bread flour, because I don't bake bread enough to have bread flour and maybe you don't either. In about an hour, I had a burnished loaf of chewy, crusty homemade bread and I could give the rest of the day over to my other passions. I'm honestly still a little in shock that this works and works so well. The most exquisite of comfort foods, without any fear of failure? This may just be the bread to make a bread baker out of even the most commitment-phobic among us.

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Inspired by Faith Durand for The Kitchn and Kitchen Konfidence

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