No-Knead Garlic Cheese Flatbread

One of my favorite sites for bread recipes is King Arthur Four.  The recipes on this site are very reliable and so far everything I've attempted from there has turned out well.  Their No-Knead Garlic Cheese Flatbread is wonderful.  I've made it several times and it has become one of my husband's favorites.  It's a good thing it's so easy! 

To start, you dump water, flour, salt, oil and yeast into the mixing bowl of your stand mixer.  (Make sure the water is the temperature that is recommended on your container of yeast.)  Then mix for about a minute until it makes a sticky dough.

Then chop up all the mix-ins.  I like to do half sharp cheddar and half pepper jack cheese and don't forget to chop up plenty of garlic.  I also throw in about a tablespoon or so of dried Italian seasoning mix.

Now you mix it a bit longer, but it's hard to get all the cheese incorporated in.  I just try my best to get the cheese and garlic as evenly distributed throughout the dough as possible.  I figure someone ends up with an extra cheesy piece of bread, then bonus for them.

The last time I made this, we snarfed through an entire batch of this bread in one day.  So this time I divided the dough in half to make two pans, one to keep and one to give away.  

The secret to the crispy, golden "fried" crust of this bread is to drizzle the bottom of the pans with a generous amount of olive oil before you press the dough in to the pan.  Then you just smoosh it all in and even it out with your fingers.  It's ok to leave finger indentions.  I like to sprinkle it with a little more Italian seasoning.

Then you cover it and let it rise for an hour until it gets nice and puffy.

Then bake it for about 35 minutes, or until it's golden brown.

Turn it out onto a cooling rack and let it cool for a little while before slicing into it.  It's so tasty warm...or at room temperature.  There was an occasion when we actually did restrain ourselves enough to make the bread stretch over several days.  What I found out was that this bread is much better eaten the day of or day after it's made.  King Arthur Flour recommends that you slice it thin and pop the slices in the oven to make crunchy breadsticks with the older bread (if your bread lasts long enough to make breadsticks).