Filed under: — rob @ 1:05 pm
recipe is simply 2:1 flour:water with salt, yeast.
Example:
6cup flour
3 cups water
3 tsp salt.
1 tsp yeast
Mix the dry ingredients first in the KitchenAid. Then (since I didn’t have instant yeast), mix 3 cup warm water with the yeast, wait 2-3 minutes to give the yeast time to start.
Put the dough hook on the KitchenAid and get it going, then add the water/yeast mixture. Let the KitchenAid do it’s thing until the dough is ready, about 5 minutes and the dough pulling away from the walls. The KitchenAid does a much better job here than hand kneading – definitely worth it.
Get a plastic container – SnapStream or something. I’ve got one that’s 4″ square and 18″ high. Very conventient b/c when you put the dough in it, it fills half the container. You can therefore tell when the dough has doubled in size b/c it fills the whole container.
Grease this container (makes it much easier to get the bread out) and put the dough in it.
Let rise overnight in fridge remove in morning – it should be risen. chop into strips, roll each strip in flour and arrange on cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Note: some people wax eloquent about cooking stones. They are definitely a waste of time. done it both ways, doesn’t matter.
Definitely do use a garden mister to make steam. Steam on the bread makes the special crust you are looking for. The book talks about a few ways of getting the steam – like pouring boiling water into a steel pan below – but simply misting the oven walls is quite effective. Note that steam rises, so only the top loaves will get the full effect, so those loaves will brown within 10 minutes and have to be rotated to the bottom rack for the rest of the cooking time.
Cooking time total might be 30 minutes @ 480. depends how big you made the bread.
and, annoyingly, the bread on the top, it comes out with the gorgeous crust, the bread on the bottom, pretty, but not as good. I think it is b/c the steam rises to the top in the first critical baking period … i guess i you were really a stickler for it, you’d have to bake in two batches.