OK, I’m a little late to the bread baking trend.
I didn’t really get into it when the pandemic first started, but over the past year, I’ve started getting a little more interested in making my own bread.
I’d like to formally thank inflation for that. I’m not about to spend $6 on a loaf of bread when I can buy a bag of flour for $1.50.
I’ve also really, really, been trying to live more sustainably. Being able to buy flour in bulk or in paper bags, honey in refillable glass jars from our local beekeeper and cardboard containers of salt is a lot better than buying bread loaves wrapped in plastic bags and tags.
Plus, fresh bread is WAY better.
At the start of this year, I picked a simple recipe to play around with: a no-knead crusty french bread recipe that used all-purpose flour.
(It’s the King Arthur No-Knead Crusty White Bread recipe.)
It took about six months to get the recipe to work for me, my oven and my 7,000-foot elevation, but I finally perfected it, and I wanted to share my modifications with you!
This is really a great beginner bread recipe if you want to get into baking bread, but aren’t really sure where to start.
Because Ryan and I are two people and don’t need to bake three loaves of bread all at once, I cut the recipe in half. I use:
- 1.5 cups water
- 8 grams salt
- 7 grams active dry yeast
- 1 tbsp honey
- 425 grams all-purpose flour
I scoop the flour right into the bowl of my KitchenAid mixer and add the salt. In a measuring cup, I measure out 1.5 cups of lukewarm water. I make sure it’s about 100 degrees – I just kind of flick my inner wrist under the stream of our kitchen sink faucet until it feels right.
I dissolve the honey into the water, and then add the yeast. I let it sit for about two minutes until it froths up, and then I pour it into my mixer bowl and use the paddle attachment to combine everything together until it’s very sticky.
Then, I transfer the dough to a big Cambro container, cover it with a damp dish towel, and let it rise for two hours inside my oven with the light on. After two hours, I transfer it to my refrigerator and let it rise for another two hours. Then, it’s ready to bake.
Sometimes I’ll leave the dough in the fridge for a few days if I don’t need to bake the bread that day. I just try to remember to re-dampen the dish towel every day so the dough doesn’t dry out.
When I’m ready to bake my bread, I preheat my oven AND my dutch oven AND a little metal baking tray to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
Then, while my oven is heating up, I clean my countertop and sprinkle it with flour. I use a spatula (also floured) to scoop out my dough, and then I shape it into a ball and place it in the middle of a round of parchment paper that fits right in my dutch oven. I sprinkle it with a bit more flour, use a paring knife to score a large X overtop of it, and then cover it with a damp dish towel until my oven is ready.
Then, the baking. I pull out the dutch oven (carefully, using oven mitts), and plop my dough inside. I cover the dutch oven, slide it back in the oven, and pour about two cups of water into the metal baking tray – just to get my oven nice and humid.
I bake my bread for 30 minutes in the dutch oven. Then I remove the lid and bake it for another 5 minutes, and then take the bread entirely out of the dutch oven and bake it standing alone on the oven rack for the last 5 minutes.
Then, I pull it out of the oven and leave it on a cutting board to cool.
Voila!
PS: I LOVE this bread box with a built-in cutting board. I stumbled upon it about six months into my bread-baking voyage after getting annoyed with our dish-towel-over-a-cutting-board storage method, and so far, it’s been a godsend. The cutting board just slides on out to slice, and then slides back into place when you’re ready to store your bread.
It just lives on our counter now since I make so much bread.
Anyway, I’m stoked that I FINALLY mastered a bread recipe. This loaf is dense enough to be filling, but light and fluffy enough that it isn’t too chewy. I’m excited to spend the next few months of winter baking season experimenting with other bread recipes in my kitchen now that I finally have this one down!
