by J.T. Nowen

Created on: February 15, 2009   Last Updated: February 16, 2009

Making great artisan bread is easy. You only need four basic ingredients, a pizza stone, a pan full of water and time. This method is adapted from a book called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which was featured in Mother Earth News. Here's the procedure:

GATHER YOUR INGREDIENTS

You will need:

Water

2 Cups AP Flour, Unsifted

3/4 TSP or 1/2 Packet Yeast

3/4 TSP Kosher or Sea Salt (Do not use iodized)

STEP 1

Bring at least one cup of water to a boil. This is to get rid of any chlorine or other contaminants in your tap water that will kill your yeast. After the water boils, pour it into a metal measuring cup and let it come down to room temperature.

STEP 2

Dump flour, salt and yeast into a very large bowl with a lid.

STEP 3

After the water has come down to room temperature, pour it into the bowl with your dry ingredients. Mix with a wooden spoon. The dough should be wet and easy to mix.

STEP 4

Place the lid on your bowl and leave in your COLD oven for at least two hours.

STEP 5

Take the bowl out of the oven and place in your refrigerator until you are ready to bake. This will make the dough less sticky when you are ready to bake.

STEP 6

When you are ready to bake, scoop out as much dough as you want and place it on a cold pizza stone. Use flour if you have to shape it or just leave it as a rustic lump. Leave your dough at room temperature for at least twenty minutes.

STEP 7

Preheat your oven to 450 F. Fill a tray with water and place on your bottom rack. When oven is hot, bake your bread for 30 minutes.

STEP 8

Replace the dough you used with fresh boiled water, yeast, salt and flour.

OTHER TIPS

1. Never wash your dough bowl. Over time, your bread will taste more like sour dough and have better internal consistency.

2. After a few weeks and half a dozen batches of bread, you can replace 1/8 cup of water with fine unfiltered craft beer. This will introduce new types of yeast to your culture, improving the taste and complexity of your bread.

3. Once you've established a good yeast culture, replace some of your AP flour with flours from other grains such as rye, oat, barely or rice. These will give you a different crust texture.

4. You may enrich your dough with milk, honey, oil, butter or eggs. These will tenderize your bread.

5. Never knead, over mix or work your dough in any way. You'll end up knocking the air out of your dough and it will have poor rise. Other recipes call for it. NOT THIS ONE.

6. Make huge batches of dough at once if you have the room to store them in your refrigerator. You can set knobs of dough in your oven at night and bake fresh loaves every morning. The longer dough ruminates, the better bread tastes.

Visit ArtisanBreadinFive.com for more tips and information. Their method is brilliant, really.

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