When You Just Want to Loaf Around!

Mike M., South Bend 

The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking

by Jeff Hertzberg MD (Author), Zoë François (Author), Stephen Scott Gross (Photographer)

I’m going to share some of my secrets to making a great crusty bread (though 5 minutes is a lie)

First - here’s the basic recipe.

3 cups lukewarm water

1 1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast

1 1/2 tablespoons coarse salt

6 1/2 cups of unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour

cornmeal to keep dough from sticking to pizza peel.

Equipment needed:

1 Pizza peel

an oven that can get up to 450 degrees

a clean baking stone for the oven

a large mixing bowl

another large bowl

a tea towel

various measuring scoops

a one quart measuring cup

a cooling rack

oven mits

a large stainless steel mixing bowl (This is a secret)

The mixing:

Begin by measuring 6 1/2 cups of flour into a large bowl.  I just 3 1/2 cups of bread flour and 3 cups all purpose. It just makes the bread a little fluffier.

Measure 3 cups of water into a microwave safe measuring cup.  Microwave for 1 1/2 minutes or until lukewarm. Pour into large mixing bowl. Add yeast and salt and stir. Begin adding flour a cup or so at a time while stirring vigorously. Eventually it will become difficult. But don’t give up until all of the flour is well mixed.  This will create a very damp dough.  Once mixed, cover the mixing bowl with a tea towel (I usually wet the towel and wring it out well so that the dough doesn’t dry out while rising). Place the bowl of dough in a warm place (my oven has a “proof” setting) so that the dough will rise for at least 3 hours.

The baking:

Sprinkle a pizza peel with a generous coating of corn meal.  This allows the dough to slide off easily onto your baking stone. Once the bread is proofed (about 3 hours) sprinkle the top with flour to keep it from sticking to your hands and cut off a large hunk of dough. I usually go without about 1/3 of the total.  Form roughly into a ball and place on the edge of your pizza peel.  Set a timer for 40 minutes.  This is for the second proofing.  With about 30 minutes remaining, preheat oven for 450 with the baking stone in the oven near the middle. When 40 minute timer goes off, sprinkle top of bread dough with flour and cut slashes into top of dough with serrated knife. Pop bread dough onto baking stone in oven with a quick motion.  Cover with large stainless steel mixing bowl (inverted as shown) to trap steam. This improves the crust.  Bake 20 minutes. Carefully remove mixing bowl. Bake another 20 minutes or until desired brownness.  Remove from oven and cool on a baking rack. Listen for crackling sound while cooling!