My Easy, quick(ish) Artesan Bread Recipe
This recipe is a pain free no hassle way of making bread for every day, Its an amalgamation of the countless recipes online I have trawled through, none of which seemed to deliver that perfect crunchy crust tasty bread I was looking for so I tweaked and changed and eventually settled on this.
It both looks and tastes great. Try it, you will not regret it!
Ingredients are simple.
You need:
500 grams of strong white bread flour
7 grams of quick action (instant) yeast
10 grams of regular salt.
350 mils slightly warm water.
Method
Stick the flour in a large bowl and add the salt to one side, it says 10 grams above but I find a teaspoon of salt pretty much comes out at 10 grams or thereabouts and often just do that. Stick the yeast at the other side, its a bit lighter so a teaspoon and a half usually gives 7 grams.
Give the flour, yeast and salt a stir then add your slightly warm water
The next bit is the messy stirring, but heck. I dont wanna get all doughy fingered so to save that I stir my ingredients together with the handle of a teaspoon. After a bit of mixing together it clumps together into a dough - like below.
Now cover with a tea towel for about an hour, after which it should have grown in size quite a bit, maybe even, depending on your climate doubled in size!
A dough has needs..
Now it needs a tiny knead (lol) Get a jug with warm water in it and dip your hand in it (the water keeps the dough from sticking to your fingers), then grab a side of your dough and fold it in half, pressing the dough down firmly to remove all the bubbly air in it. Wet your hand and do this with the opposite side, then a few more random edges wetting your hand each time. After four or five folds the dough will be a lot smoother.
Now let it rest for another half hour.
Scrape it out onto a heavily floured worktop
Flatten it and fold it toward you as if you were closing an envelope.
give it a half turn and fold it again toward you. Now rock it back and forth a few times until it is like a big fat cigar shape and stick it onto a floured baking tray.
Almost There!! The baking bit..
Stick your oven on at 240 degrees. When it is hot enough turn it down to 200 and score the top of your bread with a knife, like so, or anyway you fancy - this basically gives it room to expand upward when baking.
Often at this part my knife seems to stick so simply wet your knife for each cut and it shoudln't!
Now bake for forty minutes. Take it out of the oven and....
Tada!
Stick it on a cooling rack until it has cooled then tuck in!
Have it anywhere!!
If you need any help then you can message me on Slack or reply here.