Yes, I know you can buy frozen bread dough. But sometimes it is fun to “do it yourself”. Warning: the dough is quite wet – and that is ok. Just have faith in the directions.
Ingredients:
- 3 cups lukewarm water
- 1 1/2 Tab granulated yeast (1 1/2 packets)
- 1 1/2 Tab kosher or other coarse salt
- 6 1/2 cups unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour, measured with the scoop-and-sweep method usi ng a 1 cup measuring cup.
- cornmeal
Directions:
Mixing and Storing the Dough
1. Warm the water slightly: It should feel just a little warmer than body temperature, about 100 degrees F.
2. Add yeast and salt to the water in a 5-quart bowl or, preferably, in a large resealable, lidded (not airtight) plastic food container. Don’t worry about getting it all to dissolve.
3. Mix in the flour- kneading is unnecessary: Add all of the flour at once, measuring it in with dry-ingredient measuring cups, by gently scooping up flour, then sweeping the top level with a knife or spatula. Mix with a wooden spoon, a high capacity food processor (14 cups or larger) fitted with the dough attachment, or a heavy-duty stand mixer fitted with the dough hook until the mixture is uniform. If you’re hand mixing and it becomes too difficult to incorporate all the flour with the spoon, you can reach into your mixing bowl with very wet hands and press the mixture together. Don’t knead- it isn’t necessary. You’re finished when everything is uniformly moist, without dry patches. This step should only take a matter of minutes, and should yield a dough that is wet and loose enough to conform to the shape of its container.
4. Allow to rise: Cover with a lid (not airtight). Don’t use any screw-top jars, which could explode from trapped gases. Allow the mixture to rise at room temperature until it begins to collapse (or at least flattens on top), approximately 2 hours, depending on the room’s temperature and the initial water temperature. Longer rising times (up to 5 hours) will not harm the result. You can use a portion of the dough any time after this period. Fully refrigerated wet dough is less sticky and is easier to work with than dough at room temperature. The authors recommend that the first time you try this recipe, you refrigerate the dough overnight (or at least 3 hours) before shaping a loaf.
On Baking Day
5. The gluten cloak:**** don’t knead, just “cloak” and shape a loaf in 30 to 60 seconds. First prepare a pizza peel (or a cookie sheet or cutting board) by sprinkling it liberally with cornmeal to prevent the dough from sticking to it when you slide it into the oven. Sprinkle the surface of your refrigerated dough with flour. Pull up and cut off a 1-pound (grapefruit-sized) piece of dough, using a serrated knife. Hold the mass of dough in your hands and add a little more flour as needed so it won’t stick to your hands. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go. Most of the dusting flour will fall off; it’s not intended to be incorporated into the dough. The bottom of the loaf may appear to be a collection of bunched ends, but it will flatten out and adhere during resting and baking. The final product with be smooth and cohesive. The entire process in this step should take no longer than 30 to 60 seconds.
6. Rest the loaf and let it rise on a pizza peel: Place shaped ball on cornmeal-covered pizza peel. Allow the loaf to rest on the peel for about 40 minutes (it doesn’t need to be covered). You may not see much rise during this period; more rise will occur during baking.
7. Twenty minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F., with a baking stone placed on the middle rack. Place an empty broiler tray for holding water on any other shelf that won’t interfere with the rising of the bread.
8. Dust and slash: Dust the top of the loaf liberally with the flour, which will allow the slashing knife to pass without sticking. Slash a 1/4-inch-deep cross, scallop, or tic-tac-toe pattern into the top, using a serrated bread knife.
9. Baking with steam: After a 20 minute preheat, you’re ready to bake. With a quick forward jerking motion of the wrist, slide the loaf off of your cornmeal covered surface and onto the preheated baking stone. Quickly but carefully pour about 1 cup of hot water from the tap into the broiler tray and close the oven door to trap the steam. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the crust is nicely browned and firm to the touch. Because you’ve used wet dough, there is little risk of drying out the interior, despite the dark crust. Allow the loaf to cool completely, preferably on a wire rack.
10. Store the remaining dough in the refrigerator in your lidded (not airtight) container and use it over the next 14 days. The dough “matures” over the 14 day period, improving flavor and texture of your bread. Cut off, shape and bake more loaves as you need them.
Tips:
*I halved the recipe and ended up baking up two loaves within the week.
*I didn’t have a pizza peel, so I used a cutting board coated with cornmeal to let the bread rise. The first loaf I made, I didn’t use enough cornmeal and my dough stuck a bit to the board. I had to knudge it onto the pizza stone and it looked a little mishapen and wobbly. When it came out of the oven though, it was a perfectly baked round loaf. On my second try, I made sure to coat my board liberally with cornmeal and had no trouble at all sliding it onto my pizza stone.
*Since you can cut off as big a piece of dough as you want to bake, the method is perfect for large and small families alike.
*I’m excited to try out other recipes in the book using the base dough- from other rustic loaves and rolls to sweet treats.
Other things you can do:
Mix the dry ingredients first. Then store the “Dry Mix” in portioned zip-lock bags. In the morning, you mix in the water for as many loaves as you think you’ll need that night and let it rise while you’re at work. This method allows you to substitute some of the water for various other “wet” ingredients like buttermilk, beer, yogurt, eggs etc.
Also worth noting, is that many breads use the same proportions of the same ingredients, but the texture (and to a lesser extent, the taste) is altered by how much you work the dough. Many breads you may wish to make require 2 rises. Letting dough sit in the refrigerator for prolonged periods will break down the gluten bonds that give the bread it’s proper consistency. Ever wonder why grocery store Italian bread in no way resembles anything close to real Italian bread? It always has a consistency more lite French bread which uses a very similar recipe. The biggest reason for this is that the pre-made dough sits too long, the gluten is degraded and after the second rise it puffs up too much, becoming flaky and light instead of dense and moist as it should be. If you insist on mixing the wet ingredients in immediately and storing an active dough, don’t make more than you’ll use in the next few days if you want a heavier bread. For light breads it makes little difference.
For an easy time saver, combine 4 egg whites with 2 Tbsp of White vinegar, 1 Tsp salt, 1 Tsp of olive oil, and 2 Tsp water. Mix until you have a homogeneous solution (no floating egg slime). Now load into a clean food-grade spray bottle and store in the refrigerator. Shake before using. This egg-wash will apply evenly, is pre-made and you won’t mess up another bowl, whisk and brush every time you make bread.
If, like me, you brew your own beer, use the active beer yeast after your first racking. Breads and perhaps more important, Pizza Dough taste much better with a good ale yeast.
Another helpful tip: You’ll still need to flour surfaces or apply corn meal to your sheet pans. Store these in empty Twist-open 20oz Soda or Beer bottles. Hit the hardware store and buy a screen cap (sold for faucets and garden hoses). They’ll fit on the bottle and keep bugs out, and allow you to sift the flour as you pour it for a more even distribution and no lumping.
**** (from the web site – because who knows what “gluten cloak” is). The next day, or even a few hours later, the dough from the fridge will be much easier to handle.
About an hour before baking, pull the bin of dough out of the fridge, remove the lid, and dust the surface of a corner of the dough with a bit of flour. Dust your pizza peel (or cutting board, or rimless baking sheet) as well.
Make sure your hands are well floured. Reach into the bin and pull out a grapefruit-sized hunk of dough, cutting it off with the serrated knife.
GENTLY pull the outer surface of the dough around to the bottom of the ball, forming a gluten “cloak” around it. Less is more here. Don’t manhandle or squeeze the dough. This should take less than 30 seconds. Don’t worry about what the bottom looks like.
Yield: Makes four 1-pound loaves. The recipe is easily doubled or halved.
