Monday, November 29, 2010

Easy Artisan Bread

1 1/2 tablespoons yeast

1 1/2 tablespoons salt

6 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, more for dusting dough

3 C lukewarm water (about 100 degrees)

Cornmeal.

(You can easily double or half the recipe. For Thanksgiving I made a full batch and got about 20 rolls from it).

1. In a large bowl or plastic container, mix yeast and salt into water. Stir in flour, mixing until there are no dry patches (I always do this by hand, but you can use an electric mixer). Dough will be quite loose and wet. Cover, but not with an airtight lid. Let dough rise at room temperature 2 hours (or up to 5 hours).

2. Bake at this point or refrigerate, covered, for as long as two weeks. When ready to bake, sprinkle a little flour on dough and cut off a grapefruit-size piece with serrated knife (To make the rolls I cut off a smaller piece of dough). Turn dough in hands to lightly stretch surface, creating a rounded top and a lumpy bottom. Put dough on pizza peel or cookie sheet sprinkled with cornmeal; let rest 40 minutes. Refrigerate any unused dough.

3. Place broiler pan on bottom of oven. Place baking stone on middle rack and turn oven to 450 degrees; heat stone at that temperature for 20 minutes.

4. Dust dough with flour, slash top with serrated or very sharp knife three times. Slide onto stone. Pour one cup hot water into broiler pan (rather than use the broiler pan, I just throw a cup of water against the side of the oven, making sure not to hit the dough—it's easier and you don't get burned) and shut oven quickly to trap steam. Bake until well browned, about 30 minutes for a loaf (or about 20 minutes for the smaller rolls). Cool completely.

Yield: 4 loaves.


This recipe comes from the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and is an amazing cookbook! They've got all sorts of variations on this recipe and everything I've made from the book is absolutely delicious! I definitely whole-heartedly recommend it!

http://www.amazon.com/Artisan-Bread-Five-Minutes-Revolutionizes/dp/0312362919/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291064479&sr=1-1

1 comment:

Kurt & Rachel Keyser said...

This is Ryan's girlfriend's recipe. She made the rolls for Thanksgiving and they were SOOO good!