Don't worry. I don't have a long family story about this recipe. I will get straight to it. So easy, and so good. Has become our weekly bread bake. Crispy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside.
Ingredients
3 cups Bread flour (or all purpose)
1/4 tsp instant yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
12 oz (1 1/2 cups) cool tap water
- In a large bowl combine flour, yeast , sugar, and salt.
- Add 12 oz water, and stir with inverted end of wooden spoon until blended. (I promise, this helps it come together more easily). Dough will be shaggy and sticky.
- Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap. Let dough rest 8-12 hours, at warm room temperature. We like to put it in our oven with the oven light on (do I have to specify that the OVEN IS OFF? Just making sure). You'll know the dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles.
- After proofing, scrape the dough from the bowl onto a liberally floured work surface and sprinkle a little more flour over the dough.
- Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Do not knead it!
- Place upturned mixing bowl over the dough to rest while you prep the oven.
- Place a 6-8 quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, pyrex or ceramic) into the oven and preheat to 450F.
- Once oven is preheated, carefully remove the pot from the oven. Remove the lid and turn your dough out into the pot. (Don't worry about the shape, it will be fine). For easier handling of the dough, after proofing you can place the dough on top of floured parchment paper and lift the parchment paper into the baking vessel.
- Replace the lid and bake for 30 minutes with the lid on.
- After 30 minutes, remove the lid and bake another 15 minutes until loaf is beautifully browned.
- Cool on rack.
- Enjoy!
We've made about 3 loaves and they all look different, with different textures inside and out, but all amazing.
For a printable PDF link of recipe: click here.
The above instructions are what we followed and worked great for us, but you can find many videos on YouTube with varying instructions. It helps to see how to handle the dough and what it will look like after proofing. So, here are two that we watched.
The below video is in French with subtitles, but it's the first video we saw and the closest recipe we followed. Though, at the end, we did not want our bread to be soft on the outside, so we did not put it in a bag as he did. Otherwise, it's so easy.
Thanks for visiting, and let me know if you make this recipe.
🍞
Enjoy!
Mmmm, doesn't that look delicious!
ReplyDeleteso. good.
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