Succoth which is coming up soon is a major bread eating holiday.There are fourteen meals over the course of a the seven day holiday. For Jews a meal means bread. And lots of bread gets eaten in the sukkah.Thre’s also lots of entertaining, actual and metaphysical as every sukkah receives a nightly visit from one of the ushpizin the seven shepherds of Israel.
As guests go, Ushpizin are undemanding . They don’t require chairs or a place setting or even food. They just hang out, letting us bask in their spiritual aura. Night #4 of the holiday belongs to Joseph. Since the Torah calls him the “Mashbir” the provider because he created the world’s first welfare, state, the world’s first food bank and fed the entire planet during a famine, the Belzer Hassidim honor him by serving whole wheat bread. The rationale is that as a very wholesome and complete food whole wheat bread is a fitting memorial for the man who was called “the provider.”
This is a hybrid recipe- part yeast, part sourdough but without starter and including the teeniest bit of yeast (1/2 tsp to over four cups of flour) and a long, long rising time-eighteen hours plus but the result is spectacular-a rich hearty loaf with a light open crumb.
This comes from one of my all time favorites Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything,” Yes this isn’t a kosher cookbook but there’s plenty of food that fits the kosher diet.
Mark calls this No Work Bread and he’s not kidding.
He credits the recipe to Jim Lahey of New York’s Sullivan Street bakery. Please let me know if you love this as much as I do!Thgis is what it looks like. Gorgeous eh?

Recipe
4 cups whole wheat pastry flour (the original recipe calls for all purpose or bread flour but I used Rubenfeld 80 per cent)plus more flour for the second rise
1/2 teaspoon yeast
2 teaspoons salt
2 cups tepid water
2 tablespoons olive oil
Cornmeal or bran ( I used cornmeal)
Mix everything together.
No neeed for a mixer, a wooden spoon will do a fine job. Just use a very large bowl because this will expand
The dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover it with a piece of plastic wrap and let it sit in a warm place (Bittman recommends that it stay at 70 F temperature ) for eighteen hours-yes this isn’t a typo.
Mix the dough in the early evening and by the following afternoon-or even earlier you
ll be ready to bake

When the surface is dotted with bubbles-they really look more like black dots-then add enough flour to form a non sticky dough-do this slowly, one handful at a time. Again, no need for a machine. This is a soft dough. It feels like working with playdoh. This is actually a great project for kids-parts of it at least
Cover with plastic and let the dough sit for another 15 minutes
Dust the dough with cornmeal. Cover with a towel or plastic wrap and let it rise for another two hours.
When the dough is ready it will have doubled and when you poke a finger inside it, it won’t spring back.
At least a half hour before the dough is ready preheat oven to 450 F or 220 C and insert a three to four quart covered pot with lid into the oven. The pot will function as a kind of steam oven and it needs to be super hot to accomplish this.
Be sure to use oven mitts and keep children away.
Let the oven and the pot heat up for a half hour. Then open the oven door, open the pot and carefully slide dough inside-no need to grease the pan-it won’t stick.
Bake covered for a half hour. The remove lid and bake uncovered for another half hour.
Remove from oven Wait a half hour-Maimonides says that it’s bad for the stomach to eat bread fresh from the oven and somehow Bittman has absorbed thsi teaching.
Then eat . Freezes well. Creates a very large open, crumbed loaf. Delicious.