Stir flour, salt and yeast together in a large bowl. Using a wooden spoon, stir in the water until your dough begins to come together into a cohesive shaggy mass. Be careful not to overwork your dough and use only as much water as you need to bring the dough together. The less you handle it, the more air you will leave in the dough and the more air pockets you will have in your finished bread.

Place the ball of dough in a lightly-greased bowl and cover the bowl tightly with Saran Wrap. Let the dough sit out on your counter for 8-12 hours.

When you are ready to bake your bread, preheat your oven to 450 degrees F. Put a Dutch oven (without the lid) into your preheated oven and let it heat up for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, turn your dough out onto a floured surface and form it into a ball. Cover it loosely with

Saran Wrap and let it rest while your Dutch oven heats.

After your Dutch oven has heated in the oven for 30 minutes, carefully remove it from the oven and, with floured hands, place your dough it it. (I put my dough on a piece of parchment and put it into the Dutch oven on the parchment. This helped insulate the bottom of the bread and kept it from burning during baking. I also sat my Dutch oven on a cookie tray in the heated oven to further insulate the Dutch oven and the bread.)

Put the cover on the pan and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the cover and brush the top of the bread with egg wash (an egg beaten with a tablespoon or two of water) and bake for 15 to 20 minutes more to brown the top of the bread.

Remove the bread from the oven and let it cool on a rack before cutting.