This is an easy, no-knead recipe which yields three delicious loaves. You can use plain flour but as the nutritional value of that is approximately zero, I use half plain and half wholemeal - fully wholemeal tends to have trouble rising but hey, it's all about experimenting so go nuts.
Credit for the recipe goes to Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François, the authors of Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day - see the background to it, a complex version of the process, plus other recipes on this series of pages: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/Artisan-Bread-In-Five-Minutes-A-Day.aspx?page=1 - there are 8 or so pages which follow that one, links at the bottom of the first page.
Step 1:
Put 3 cups of warm water (I use very warm water) in a large bowl. Sprinkle over 1 1/2 Tbsp yeast. You can also add 1 1/2 Tbsp salt but I cut this out with no obvious change to the loaf.
Add 6 1/2 cups of flour, cup by cup, stirring in between each one until evenly moist. I find I need to add a bit more water at the end to bind the last bit of flour in.
Cover and leave to rise on the bench. It takes about 2 hours.
Step 2: Keep the bowl in the fridge until you're ready to bake a loaf - allow around 2 hours before you want to eat it. Cut out 1/3 of dough from bowl. Roll in a bit of flour. With your thumbs on top and fingers on the sides, stretch the top around to the base, rolling the sides underneath as you do this. Rotate the loaf and do the same again - the base will be a collection of folds and the top will be smooth. Leave to rise in your pan or on the oven tray (1-1.5 hours is usually enough). After rising, dust top with flour and slash deeply with a serrated knife.
Step 3: Preheat oven to 200°C. I cook my bread in a toaster oven - this is great because I'm not heating a large oven to cook a small loaf. We measured the electricity used to cook a loaf in this oven and it was something like 12 cents. So it's cheaper than buying bread.
Place bread in oven. It takes about 30 minutes to bake through in my oven. Have a play and see how long you need to allow. It will still rise more in the oven. I have found that covering mine with tinfoil for the first 15 minutes allows it to get a bit more volume before the crust forms. You can tell when it's done by tapping the bottom of the tin or tray with a knife - if done it will sound hollow.
Voila! Fresh bread. I bake a loaf most days as it disappears pretty quick. We also use our breadmaker (that's Ning's realm at the moment) to keep up with our hungry winter tummies.
I'd love to know how you go so be sure to post your pics and thoughts on your blog. Next round - sourdough from scratch! :D
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