If you have ever cooked chicken by the Zuni Café method in your regular oven you will know how it can really make a mess of your oven. We don't all have wood fired pizza ovens in our back yard and after all that oven cleaning I was about to give up eating chicken cooked this way. Then I got to wondering if the no no knead bread baking method might work with chicken.
I salted the chicken and left it sitting on the bench while I heated the cast iron pan in the oven set at 250 Celsius. I put the chicken in breast side down, top on and baked it for 1 hour. After 1 hour I removed the lid and turned it over and with the lid off put it back in the oven for a further 15 minutes. The skin is not as crisp as the Zuni Café method but the taste is as good. Next time I'll even make the Bread Salad. to go with it.
UPDATE: the cooking time will depend on the size of the chicken. I've been experimenting a little since my original post. Today I cooked a 1.5 kg chicken breast side up for 50 minutes, then 10 minutes with lid off pot. It was perfect.
The original No Knead Bread recipe can be found here .
