Two summers ago, my wife and I threw a 4th of July party and asked everyone to bring some food to share. Most people brought the usual stuff — pasta salad, guacamole, beer — but one friend arrived with a loaf of homemade “Red, White, and Blue” bread, which looked as though it had just been lifted from the display window of a European bakery. It was delicious, filled with chopped sundried tomatoes and topped with slabs of Zingerman’s blue cheese.

I assumed she’d spent hours in her kitchen, kneading the thing herself, put she told me confidentially that she’d only put a half an hour of work into the process. The secret? Jim Lahey’s “My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method,” a cookbook that allows you to bypass the difficult parts of the bread-making process. All you need is time (for the bread to complete its slow rise) and a cast iron pot.

3 cups unbleached bread flour