Baking Artisan Bread

[Weekend_Sawyer]

I am brand new to baking bread and loving it!
It's pretty easy and not really time consuming as you let it sit and do the work itself. In other words no kneading.

I mixed 3 cups all purpose flour, 1tsp salt, 1/2 tsp dry active yeast and 1 1/2 cups warm water. Mix in a bowl and let sit.


 

After about 3 hours it will rise and look bubbly. Sorry, no pic of that.

Flower a surface, your hands and the dough and fold it a couple of times and move it to a floured proofing bowl. It's very soft and pliable and quite pleasing to the touch.


 

Let it sit for about 45 minutes while you heat the oven and a dutch oven to 450 degrees. Place the dough in the dutch oven, cover and bake for 30 minutes

When you take it out it should look amazing.

 

If the crust is not brown enough put it back uncovered for 10 - 15 minutes.
This bread is really good.


 

[Raider Bill]

Nothing better than home baked bread.!

[Weekend_Sawyer]

Friday I am going to try to use the same method and make whole wheat artesin bread.

[scgargoyle]

I've been making bread for about 40 years, but just for holidays and other special occasions. Now that I'm retired, I started making all of our bread. I make a healthy oatmeal bread, but my favorite is a nice sourdough rye bread. It took me some fiddling around to get it right, but I have it down to a science now. I bought some San Francisco starter off ebay, and that made all the difference in flavor.

[Weekend_Sawyer]

Nice, I feel that making sourdough is high level bread making.
Maybe someday. I'll be baking 3 loaves today 2 white and one wheat.
I let them sit out on the counter covered overnight.
Fingers crossed.
Jon

[Jeff]

It's very soft and pliable and quite pleasing to the touch

.

You weren't talking about bread there, was ya.

[WV Sawmiller]

  I haven't tried making bread but the ones here sure make it tempting. I used to make yeast rolls from a honey cookbook I got from my bee supply company. I think it used 1/2 cup of honey and something like 7 cups of flour. It would rise in a bowl in the refer and you'd press it down every day. I'd take out 4 golf ball sized pieces of dough and pit in an 8-9 inch pie plate and let it rise and completely fill the pan while I was in class. I'd bake them when I got home. They were real light and airy. I wish I knew how to make Indian Naan. We got that overseas in an outdoor cafe in Jeddah Saudi Arabia and it was about the best I ever ate. They made it in a big ceramic oven. They'd stretch the dough over a little pillow with a hand strap on the back then slap it on the side of the hot oven, let it cook a minute or so then pull it out the top with a tool that looked like a snake hook and toss it in a big waiting pan. When you'd break one open the big bubbles of steam would come out. Hmmmmm! digin_2

[Weekend_Sawyer]

Leaving the dough out for right around 18 hours to rise worked fine.
This makes it much easier to make bread as I can make the dough before I go to bed and bake it when I get home from work the next day.

 

Everyone said they liked them at dinner friday night.
I think I need to tweak the whole weat some, I'm going to try adding a 1/4 cup of molasses and some seeds, like sunflower and pumpkin.

The next thing I want to try is using the same recipe and add oil and sugar to make pizza dough.

[woodroe]

Sourdough starter isn't hard to make or maintain. Its like keeping a pet but you
only have to feed it every time you use it, store in the fridge when not using .
All you need is unbleached flour and water to make your own.
Takes about a week to get a usable culture going. Easy to find instructions online.
The beauty of sourdough bread over active dry yeast is that it takes longer to rise
so you get a more fermented product. If you let it go a few rises or overnight in the fridge
before baking you can get a more sour or tangy tasting bread.
The other benefit of it is being easier to digest for people with typical bread issues.
Going on 10 years pumping out sourdough bread here and there is no going back.