I’ve baked at least a dozen loaves of the Mark Bittman No Knead Bread.  This is the first one that actually rised and came out to my satisfaction.  All the previous ones were fine, but i always felt that they were too low and dense.  The last few loaves i stumbled on something, previously i kept reducing the amount of water in an attempt to make the dough easier to manage.  I created a dough that was less sticky and more like normal dough, but it never really rised as much in the oven and the crust was always a little too thick.
A few loaves ago i accidentally put in too much water (or it was humid) and it came out really wet.  As wet as in the youtube videos, this makes for a completely unmanageable dough, it’s so sticky you can’t really form it in a ball, and you end up chucking it into the pot.
Well it seems counter intuitive but this resulted in the best loaf i’ve baked so far.  As you can see this one is pretty high out the oven, and the crumb structure is nicely developed.   Crust is nice but not too thick, the interior is moist but not as wet as my previous loaves.  I really hope i can repeat this on the next loaf.  The biggest change i made recently was to go for a wetter dough and i just switched to a bag of Pillsbury Bread flour.  My previous bag was Gold Medal Bread flour but i did not get a result this good.  I’d like to try the King Arthur Bread flour (even higher protein percentage) but it’s 50% more expensive so i’m still holding out on that.
I think this bread is perfectly acceptable as a replacement for store bought bread, I have not bought a loaf of bread in nearly a year.  It’s a pain to wait 24 hours for the dough to rise and develop but i just plan ahead and average 2 loaves a week.  I’m not sure why, maybe the extra moisture  makes toasting it really nice, it comes out warm and steamy.