I look at the no-knead bread recipe, created by Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Street Bakery and printed by the New York Times in the fall of 2006, as one of those recipes that will be with us for all time to come. People went crazy for it when it first came out and folks all over the world continue play with it, innovating new ways to make beautiful, flavorful, bakery-quality bread in their very own ovens. In January, Cook's Illustrated devoted an entire issue to no-knead bread, doing their level best to make an already-good recipe even better.

Today's image, from Timothy Gerdes, is a loaf of nearly no-knead bread with olives, rosemary and parmesan made from the Cook's Illustrated version of the recipe. Looks delicious Timothy, thanks for adding it to the Slashfood Flickr pool.

This last Monday night, just before I went to bed, I had an urge to start a batch of No-Knead bread. No-Knead bread has been on my mind a lot lately, mostly because somehow Lifehacker came across my post about it on my personal blog from last January and linked to it, making it the most hit-upon post in the history of that blog. So the recipe has been on my mind. I stirred up a batch that night, using yeast I had bought over the weekend, and went to bed.

The next afternoon, after about 14 hours of bubbling, my dough was nice and bubbly. I turned it out on to a board, folded it over on itself a couple of times and let it hang for another couple of hours. I preheated my pot (I used an oval cast iron pot that belonged to my grandmother. It's just a tiny bit small for the job, but creates a really nice shape) and when the two hours were up, I tossed my bread into the pot, put the lid on and slide it into the oven.

It's been about eight months since I last made this bread and I forgot how gorgeous it gets. I literally gasped when I took the lid off to brown up the top, because it was so perfect. So, I want to remind you all, once again, that you really should be making this bread. It's easy, it's tasty and it gives you a sense of satisfaction in the kitchen that is often hard-won. Oh, and if you need more convincing, Megan at Not Martha made it this week as well, incorporating tips from Cooks Illustrated into her batch.

While I have experimented with different butters in baking, I'm not sure that I'd want to participate in a butter taste test - particularly not when one of the tastings involves eating butters plain to "experience their melting properties directly on the tongue." That being said, I do appreciate the efforts of the tasters from Cooks Illustrated who participated in a premium butter tasting, eating butter both plain and on baguettes to try to pick out the top butter.

The butters tested all had butterfat contents of at least 82%, higher than the standard 80%, with the exception of Land O'Lakes, which was included as a benchmark. Every single butter tested - seven unsalted and six salted - were recommended including the non-premium benchmark butter, so it sounds like you can't go wrong by choosing a name-brand butter or a butter that is "european-style." The butters were ultimately ranked by preference, but not one was a loser:

Unsalted:

• Land O'Lakes Ultra Creamy butter
• Presidente Unsalted butter
• Celles Sur Belle Premium Churn
• Land O'Lakes Unsalted Sweet butter (benchmark)
• Organic Valley European-style butter
• Plugra European-style butter
• Jana Valley Imported Sweet Cream Butter

Cook's Illustrated is definitely one of the best resources for any food-related technical questions. They test everything - from ingredients to recipes - exhaustively, so you are basically guaranteed a good result just by following their meticulous instructions. Most of the sections on their website require a subscription, so unless you get the magazine through the mail or register with them, your access to their vast resources will be limited to the few things that they keep in the free section of their site. Fortunately, a great article called Mastering Turkey Gravy is available just in time for Thanksgiving. They talk about equipment, as well as the major components of the dish, before getting down to the recipe and the technique. Their recipe calls for a quick turkey stock, a roux to thicken the sauce and the addition of the pan drippings to get the maximum flavor. Take a look at the whole article before the season ends ad it goes back behind the pay wall.

If your family is anything like mine, you probably have at least one member of the extended family (perhaps a somewhat elderly member) who feels that Thanksgiving is no time to be messing with flavor fusions or untraditional side dishes. Relatives of this type want their turkey with gravy, potatoes, cranberry sauce and green bean casserole. Fortunately, you'll be able to find the very best versions of those sides, and many others, in Cook's Illustrated's Best American Side Dishes. In keeping with their usual style, the more than 500 recipes and the related background information is all exhaustively researched and pretty much guaranteed to turn out well. There are step-by-step diagrams and taste tests along the way to help you put forth the best finished product. And, for those not entirely inclined to stick with tradition, they provide variations and updated takes on many of the included dishes, so there will be things to please every member of the family in here. The recipes include Blanched Kale with Shallots and Cream, deviled eggs, potato salad and Savory Noodle Kugel with Caramelized Onions & Cauliflower.

It has been several years since the lever corkscrew design first catapulted to popularity, going from a gadget that was almost strictly for big wine drinkers to a staple in any home that also has a bottle or two of red. The style was popularized by the Metrokane Rabbit corkscrew, but there are any number of similarly designed openers available today. The last time that Cook's Illustrated put these openers to the test was about 9 years ago and in their most recent issue, they decided that it was time to revisit them and see how some of the more expensive brands stacked up to some of the less expensive newcomers.

Their "ultimate opener" was the Screwpull Trigger from Le Creuset, which has a unique mechanism that adds an extra grip to the cork, ensuring a fast and clean uncorking. But out of the 13 models, 12 made a respectable showing, so CI's conclusion seems to be that you will do fine with almost any lever-style wine opener. Their advice, if you're not going for their "ultimate" model, is to try to select openers with longer handles, which will make removing the corks easier.

Cook's Illustrated has featured their taste test of bottled barbecue sauces on their website as we head into the summer grilling season. They sought out all the "original" flavored BBQ sauces that they could find in their local (Boston, MA) markets and tested them as dipping sauces for chicken tenders. Barbecue sauces are clearly a personal matter, but the tasting panel looked for a balance of sweetness, smokiness and spices that had a good tomato flavor and a relatively thick consistency. While 30 sauces were tested, only 8 made the final cut.

I have a couple issues with the test, the first one being that not all of these sauces are nationally available, though I wouldn't expect them to test every brand in the country. The bigger issue is the fact that the winning sauce had a "thick, coarse texture" and seemed "unprocessed." Even when I make barbecue sauce, I try to have it thick and smooth, not chunky or textured. Also, do most people eat their barbecue sauce purely as a dip? Was this really the best way to compare how the sauces would hold up to, say, grilled foods? It's hard to know, but here are their results:

This pizza was made with a crust recipe that I got out of the most recent issue of Cooks Illustrated. As soon as I read the article saying that they had come up with a way to replicate the light, crisp crust of pizzeria pizza in a home oven, I knew I needed to try it.

Let me just say that I was not disappointed at all. This was definitely the best pizza crust I have ever made - and better than many that I have had in restaurants. It was light, crisp and delicious - not to mention that the outside edge was full of delightfully airy holes. I may never use another crust recipe.

MSNBC recently featured a piece on coffee from Cook's Illustrated founder and editor Chris Kimball. As those of you familiar with Cook's might expect, it's a rundown of store-brand coffees, coffee makers and some tips. Winners in the whole bean (CI eschews pre-ground coffee, of course) taste tests included light roasts from Green Mountain and Eight-O'Clock and dark roasts from Millstone and Starbucks. There's also discussion of storage (fridge vs. room temperature) and grinders (burr vs. blade). Then there are the coffee makers. Kimball goes over some of the less-common-than-a-Mr.-Coffee items like vacuum brewers (right) and single cup espresso makers. There's also a recipe for pecan sour cream coffee cake.