Artisan bread - it's easy!

By jenn0319

This recipe is from Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day from Zoe Francois - I was always scared of yeast, but now I make homemade bread ALL the time!

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 cups lukewarm water
• 4 teaspoons yeast
• 4 teaspoons course salt (I used sea salt)
• 7 1/4 cups all purpose flour

Preparation

Step 1

I just used the biggest bowl I had. You don’t even need a mixer for this recipe, a spoon is just fine. The best part is you can actually store the leftover dough if you don’t bake it all and it lasts up to two weeks in the fridge!

1. Combine water, yeast and salt in a large bowl. With a spoon, stir in the flour. The dough will be wet.


2. At this point you can store it in the fridge for later. Otherwise, let it rise on the counter for 2 hours. When I came back to check on it, I couldn't believe how high it had risen!


3. Grab about a grapefruit size piece of dough and quickly shape it into a ball. You can put a little flour on your hands because the dough is sticky!

4. Preheat the oven at 450 degrees and place a broiler pan in the lowest shelf in the oven. I don’t have a pizza stone (which the recipe suggested), but used my pizza pan – place that into the oven to get hot while the oven is getting hot. The directions suggested placing the dough on parchment paper so you can just transfer that to the baking stone or baking sheet. Using a serrated knife, make a few cuts on top of the dough about 1/4 inch deep.

5. Heat one cup of water in the microwave for about a minute. Place the dough on the heated baking stone, or cookie sheet and add the hot water to the broiler pan below that (it will create steam) and shut the door as fast as you can. Don’t open the oven door during baking, that's what keeps the crust nice and crunchy.

6. Bake for 30 minutes, or until nicely browned. You can also test it by tapping on the bottom of the bread. If it sounds hallow, its done. Cool on a wire rack.

Can I just tell you how excited I was when I opened my oven to this gorgeous loaf of bread! The first loaf was a little smaller than this and within half an hour, every member in my family would cut off a slice and it was gone! So luckily you can make 4 loaves of bread with this recipe.