- 2
- 30 mins
- 85 mins
Ingredients
- Preferment:
- 3-1/2 cups bread flour
- 1-1/4 cups water
- 1/2 tablespoon salt
- 1/8 teaspoon instant yeast
- Final Dough:
- 2-1/2 cups bread flour
- 1-1/2 cups whole wheat or rye flour
- 1-1/2 cups water
- 1/2 tablespoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
- All of the preferment
Preparation
Step 1
Preferment:
1. Put the yeast in the water and stir.
2. Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl and pour in the yeasted water.
3. Mix until the flour is hydrated, adding more water if necessary.
4. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave the preferment out at room temperature overnight (up to 16 hours... if you need more time before baking put it in the refrigerator).
Final Dough:
5. Combine all of the ingredients except the preferment in a mixing bowl.
6. Chop the preferment up into small pieces and mix or knead it into the final dough until they are thoroughly combined, about 5 minutes by machine or 10 minutes by hand.
7. At the end of that time the new and old dough aren't perfectly combined, you can still see a few streaks of the lighter colored preferment in it, but they are sufficiently combined that loaves bake evenly.
8. Place the dough back in a greased bowl and ferment for 2-1/2 hours, punching down or folding the dough twice during that time.
9. At the end of the fermentation, divide the dough into two pieces and preshape each into a ball.
10. Cover with a clean towel and let each rest for 5 to 10 minutes before shaping into the final shape.
11. Once shaped, cover the loaves with a clean towel and set aside for a final rise, approximately 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 hours.
12. Halfway though the final rise, begin preheating the oven to 450 degrees. If you are using a baking stone, preheat it as well.
13. Right before placing it in the oven, score the loaves.
14. Place them in the oven and use whatever technique you use to create stream in the oven to encourage proper crust development.
15. After 20 minutes of baking, rotate the loaves 180 degrees so that they'll bake evenly.
16. Bake until an instant read thermometer reads around 200 degrees, which took approximately 35 minutes.