I finally made good bread

  • Not_irony [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Very nice. Wanna share a recipe? How'd you get that dope crust?

    • MirrorMadness [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      I took it from Flour Water Salt Yeast. You'll need a big thing to mix in, a Dutch oven, a scale, and ideally (but you can do without) cane baskets for the final proofing. It's:

      1000g all purpose flour, 780g of 95 degree F water, 21g of sea salt, and 4g instant yeast. This makes two loaves, so you can halve it. Autolyse the flour/water for 25 minutes before adding the salt and yeast. Handmix the (very wet) dough by pinching to integrate the salt and yeast, fold it 1-2 times, then fold it twice early in the bulk fermentation (within the first hour). Wait for it to triple in size (like, 5.5 hours usually?). Delicately separate it into two loaves, fold each loaf one more time and let each proof seam-side down in a cane basket. Preheat oven to 475 with a Dutch oven in it - use an oven thermometer!!! After an hour, put one basket in the fridge and drop the other loaf in your Dutch oven seam side UP. The crust comes from the Dutch Oven - 30 minutes with the lid on, 20 minutes with the lid off (or even longer - the bottom of this loaf is pretty burnt, but if you like it really burnt you can definitely do another 5-10 minutes without the lid.) Let it cool 20 minutes before slicing (and enjoy the sound of it crackling). Let the Dutch Oven reheat in the 475 F oven for 5 minutes, then add the other loaf and repeat.

      I'm going to try an overnight fermentation this weekend for an early bake. If it goes as well as this one did, I'll share pics.

      I also never realized how indispensable an oven thermometer. My oven's internal thermometer is basically broken - it's typically 25 degrees cooler in the oven than it thinks, but it also will not raise temperatures beyond certain arbitrary points (350 F for some reason). This led to some of my early efforts taking like 90 minutes for a really dry product.

      • Not_irony [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I'll upgrade my tools with that sweet, sweet $1200 Biden bucks. Thanks for sharing

    • MirrorMadness [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      replied to another comment with the recipe, but it's taken from Flour Water Salt Yeast :-)