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Ingredients
- 3 cups of warm water
- 1.5 tablespoons of salt
- 1.5 tablespoons of yeast
- 6.5 cups of flour
Details
Adapted from jezebel.com
Preparation
Step 1
First, take 3 cups of warm water (not too hot) and pour it into a resealable container. Stir in 1.5 tablespoons of salt.
Add 1.5 tablespoons of yeast. Stir.
Let the mixture sit for a few minutes, until the yeast fully dissolves and starts bubbling.
Then add approximately 6.5 cups of flour. Just dump it all in there, there's no point in adding it cup by cup.
Stir the whole mixture together until a loose, very sticky dough forms.
When there are no more pockets of unmixed flour or water left, place the lid loosely on top of the container, and let the dough sit at room temperature until it rises.
When the dough has risen to the top — which might take 1-2 hours, depending on your room temperature — punch it down slightly (if necessary) to fit the lid onto the container. Seal it.
Place the container in the fridge for a few hours, or overnight. This dough will keep in the fridge for 3 weeks. The longer you can stand to wait to make a loaf, the better and more flavorful your bread will be.
Whenever the desire for fresh, home-made bread next strikes, take a loaf pan, a cast-iron skillet, a cookie tray, or whatever you want to bake on, and preheat your oven to 450 Fahrenheit. Grab some kind of oil and grease the pan.
While your hands are oily, pick off a hunk of the dough. Form it into a loaf. Reseal the container, and return the remainder of the dough to the fridge, where it will continue developing its flavor.
Slash the top of your loaf with a sharp knife. This step isn't strictly speaking necessary, but it gives a more professional appearance. Otherwise the top of your loaf will tear itself open as it bakes. There is no need to wait for the formed loaf to reach room temperature, or to proof it. Bake your loaf for 30-35 minutes. I recommend kicking the temperature up to 500 Fahrenheit for the last 5-10 minutes. It really improves the crust.
When you finish your last loaf, you don't have to wash your container. Even if you don't have time to mix a fresh batch of dough, just seal the lid and return the empty container to the fridge. In a week or two when you do want to mix a new dough, the remains of the yeast in the last batch will have deposited a delicious pool of greyish alcohol at the bottom of the container. Just pour your warm water on top of that liquid and follow the recipe as above. Not washing the container is a great way of getting that delicious, three-week-old-refrigerator-dough taste in a dough that is in fact just hours old.
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