I’ve been waiting for a rainy day to tell you about this bread, and though today fits the quintessential dreary, wet spring day, I am a bit ashamed I’ve waited so long to share. I’m sure you all are familiar with the concept of no-knead bread, the kind that prefers to let bread get its crackly crust and incredible flavor from the tiniest smidge of yeast and a long, slow fermenting rise. I hail Jim Lahey as the king of this wondrous feat, I mean, us moms over here don’t have spare time to intensely knead bread for our dinner everyday. This concept is a game changer. It’s been insanely popular on the blogosphere for the last 7+ years, but today I would like to present my riff on the classic: a no-knead loaf filled with caramelized onion goodness and gooey pockets of goat cheese — I’m clearly not subtle when it comes to the things I like, cough, caramelized onions and goat cheese, cough.

Regardless of how un-hands-on no-knead bread might be, it still does take some foresight to plan out. When I mentioned above that a no-knead loaf needs a long, slow rise, I’m talking 24-hours. Lahey’s recipe calls for an 18-hour rise, so for those thinking I’m trying to kill you with an extra 6-hours, well, I’ve got your back. 18-hours is an odd length to time-out. When to start making the bread, and then letting it slowly rise, making sure you factor in enough time for the quick second 15-minute rise as well as bake time so that everything can be prepared and ready to eat when your husband steps through the front door ready to get his chow on. (Just to be realistic here, men should give you extra brownie points your house now smells like an angelic bread revival when he steps inside regardless of how “on time” or not your bread might be. But I digress.) 18-hours, whether you work out of the home or in the home can be challenging to time perfectly so I stretched it out, after all, isn’t the long rise where this bread grabs hold of its shekinah glory?

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After such a decadent pie I’ve decided to self inflict an extreme detox — a word I refused to let into my vocabulary, every-day thinking, and entire life. Detoxes are for those who eat in excess, who are health nuts, for people who feel bad about the tiniest pin point of margarine (eww, yuck!) on their 52 multi-grain, vitamin packed, more nutritious than a raw kale, beets and spinach combination, inch of cardboard toast each morning. I’m just not one of those. I’ve been known to eat an entire pint of Ben and Jerry’s for dinner and then go for dessert (ahem, churro chex mix, how could I not?).

I’m one who violently opposes running, who flees from the slightest hint of a juice cleanse, and shuns (by ripping into a thousand shreds) the $5 gym membership flyers that daily plague my mailbox. I refuse to be guilted into any kind of regimen (ice cream of course, the obvious exception). But pie and ice cream and churros have begun their eternal devastation to this body, and right before bathing suit season too. How rude. (If you are the super breed kind of woman who was born a permanent size 2 for your entire life no matter what you intake, I loathe you. Also, if there is such a thing as a metabolism transplant please sign up. Gaining weight is awesome! hehe)

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Alright, I’ve run out of reasons to procrastinate, so let’s get to it. Let’s talk pie. Like, extraordinary, intense, jaw-dropping, labor of love pie. That, is what this is. It is no joke, no make-me-on-a-whim-because-you-suddenly-got-a-hankerin-for-a-really-good-wedge-of-fluffy-banana-cream-pie. This baby takes time and patience; it’s definitely a celebratory pie if there ever was one and demands you to scream out after landing it gracefully on top of your highest pedestal for all to see, NAILED IT! Because you actually will. I have complete faith in you.

Unlike the more “traditional” banana cream — the one that involves pudding and wafer cookies, a banana and a pile of cool whip — this pie has five major components that each makes you invest your valuable nap time minutes (read: you will be making your own peanut butter, pastry cream and bourbon caramel, you can do it!). On an everyday basis I would be telling you streamline!, reduce it to one bowl!, substitute with things you already have stocked in your pantry! (peanut butter, I’m talking to you) but in this case, in this rare worth-it-to-spend-a-few-days-slaving moment, I want to tell you to forget it all just this once and do it the long way.

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The first family Easter dinner I brought my husband to we dined on lamb. I guess you could call it tradition, we eat it every Easter, though I never gave it much thought until my newly made husband balked on the ride to my parents house over the sacrilege of eating lamb on the very day celebrating the resurrection of…the Lamb of God. At nineteen I just shrugged. It didn’t bother me a bit, or even occur to me to make the connection. To me, it was the only time each year I got to feast on a lamb dinner and I was not about to have my husband and his teasing accusations interfere.

Besides, the joke was on him. No sooner did he get over his mockery of my family’s blasphemy and shimmy a piece of roasted meat on his plate than he got wide eyed and slightly judgmental that we ate our sacrificial blasphemous heretical lamb with green jello. Green jello! We still chuckle and shake our heads whenever we think about his barbaric sheep meat ignorance — not knowing that lamb is eaten with mint jelly.

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This is one of those dishes that gets me super excited and begs me to tell you: make this now! Do not wait for this horrid rain to stop, do not wait for the end of your work day, do not wait for your vegetarian conscious to pipe up and remind you, you don’t eat meat. But I fear if I display this much fervor over a chicken dinner you will take my word less seriously, especially the next time another extraordinary recipe comes across these pages. So suffice it to say this frighteningly excellent recipe is what every chicken dish could be, or more correctly should be and is the perfect alternative to a disappointing spring market still lacking everything but the last withering remnants of winter’s offerings: root vegetables.

But if you will humor me for a moment and let me be far more dramatic than I am in everyday life, I would like to take this time to talk about how this, this southern deconstructed pot-pie like dish, can change your entire perspective on chicken. You see, this month I realized I only had nine recipes archived under poultry. Nine! And I don’t think I could pass off the impersonation of being vegetarian (ha ha ho ho, yeah right) even when there is an overwhelming dominance of vegetarian options (fifty-four!) categorized for you non-meat lovers. Now most of you following us into our fourth year here at the red spoon will know that I’ve griped and complained over chicken exactly nine times. Each time my opinion shifts as I recognize not all chicken has to be boring or mundane. Each time it gets better. Far better. But I think chicken and dumplings has irrevocably changed my views on chicken being dinner more than nine times in four years. In fact, it could be a weekly routine.

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