My bread

When he wrote about Jim Lahey's bread in the New York Times, Mark Bittman's excitement was palpable: The loaf is incredible, a fine-bakery quality, European-style boule that is produced more easily than by any other technique I've used, and it will blow your mind.

Here, thanks to Jim Lahey, New York's premier baker, is a way to make bread at home that doesn't rely on a fancy bread machine or complicated kneading techniques.

The secret to Jim Lahey's bread is slow-rise fermentation.

As Jim shows in My Bread, with step-by-step instructions followed by step-by-step pictures, the amount of labor you put in amounts to 5 minutes: mix water, flour, yeast, and salt, and then let time work its magic-no kneading necessary.

The process couldn't be more simple, or the results more inspiring.

Here-finally-Jim Lahey gives us a cookbook that enables us to fit quality bread into our lives at home.