Really, really easy bread

Impress your friends, feel like a homesteader, eat real bread!

I’m a big fan of Michael Pollen’s approach to eating in Food Rules:

“Eat real food

Mostly plants

Not too much.”

I think this bread recipe fits the bill (adapted from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day). It has four “real” ingredients:

3 cups warm water

1.5 tbsp yeast

1.5 tbsp salt

6 cups flour

In a large bowl, combine water, yeast and salt. Don’t worry about making sure all the yeast dissolves. Then add your flour – all at once! I usually do 5 cups white flour and 1 cup whole wheat. Play around with it to get the mix you want. You can get fancy and add some extra grains like oats, or flax seed.

Mix. When you can’t mix anymore with a spoon, use wet hands to pack the rest of the flour into the dough. DO NOT KNEAD. Just press it together. Then cover your bowl (I use a plate) and let it rise until it has doubled, about 2 hours.

Now you are ready to use your dough to make bread, or you can put it in the fridge (with a lid on it, but not an airtight seal) and use it at some point over the next 2 weeks. It makes three small loaves, or two larger ones. Need more? You can easily double this recipe.

Baking Day

OK, you’re ready to bake. Take the dough out of the fridge and tear off a chunk of dough. Grapefruit-sized will make a small loaf that you and I other person could probably devour at dinner. Dust the chunk liberally with flour so you can manipulate the dough without it sticking to your hands. At this point you will shape it, but again DO NOT KNEAD. What you are about to do is create a gluten cloak. Check out this video to see how.

After shaping, leave the bread to rest for 20 minutes on a cutting board that has been dusted with cornmeal. This will help it slide off the board and into the oven if you are using a pizza stone. Otherwise you can let it rest on your baking sheet (no cornmeal required).  After 20 minutes, start pre-heating your oven to 450°. If you have a pizza stone, place it in the oven for pre-heating. Also, place an old baking dish in the oven – something you don’t mind getting a bit rusty if it’s metal. 

After another 20 minutes, slide your loaf into the oven and quickly pour 1 cup of hot water into the baking dish. The water creates a bit of steam in the oven.

Bake for 30 minutes and voila – artisan bread! Best enjoyed with butter and eaten all at once on the spot! OK, that’s not really part of Michael Pollen’s approach, but it is really hard to stop.

- Thanks Verena for passing on the recipe.