Ever since Jake (my brother) gave me "Artisanal Bread in Five Minutes a Day" I've been baking pretty much all of the fancy bread we eat around here. It's remarkably easy to keep the dough around in the fridge and make a couple of baguettes whenever you want a nice sandwich. Although I have tried a number of the recipes in the book (the rye bread is really good), my goto dough is the "classic boule" dough - the first one in the book. It is only 4 ingredients. This is for a double batch (6 or so fairly big baguettes).
6 cups warm water
3 Tsp kosher salt
3 Tsp active dry yeast (I use the RedStar brick shaped vacuum pack from Costco)
13 cups (4 pounds 2 oz.) white flour (I quite favor King Arthur - 25 pound bag is 10 bucks at Costco).
Put water in a coverable container (I use a big rectangular Tupperware), dissolve the salt into it, then sprinkle the yeast on top. Let the yeast get wet and mix it into the water (best to wait a couple of minutes so that it gets wet, otherwise it clumps up when you stir it). Then add the flour and mix with a good solid spoon until the flour is all wetted. Then stop. Leave it out on the counter for 1-2 hours with the cover on it loosely (so that gas can escape) until it has risen quite a bit (for me, "quite a bit" means when it hits the lid of my container - this is about double or triple its original size). At this stage the dough is very wet and sticky, which lets the gluten molecules unwind and line up with each other if you just give it time. That's the part that simplifies everything - you don't knead it at all. Just toss it in the fridge (with the cover on loosely so that gas can escape) at this point for at least two hours (overnight is better, but if your are willing to work at it, you can actually use the dough at this point without going in the fridge at all - it's just really sticky and hard to work with unless you keep flouring your hands).
Seeds - Aug 02, 2012 4:16:8 AM